
Class 

Book^. 






MEMORIAL 



OF 



ZACHARIAH ALLEN, 



1795-1882. 



By AMOS PERRY. 



CAMBRIDGE: 

JOHN WILSON AND SON. 

SSnibcrsitg ^ress. 

1883. 






(og 3^-| 



or 



PREFACE. 



'T^HIS Memorial is composed mainly of selected 
tributes of respect, affection, and honor 
paid to the memory of the Hon. Zachariah Allen, 
LL.D., at the time of his decease, March 17, 1882. 
Out of scores of private letters addressed to Mr. 
Allen's family, — many of them written by emi- 
nent citizens residing in different parts of our 
country and in Great Britain, — only two are here 
printed ; one of them written by Edward Atkin- 
son, Esq., and the other by Professor William B. 
Rogers, who died suddenly while delivering an 
address before the Massachusetts Institute of 
Technology, May 30, 1882. For some interest- 
ing details in the life of Mr. Allen, the reader 



4 PREFACE. 

is referred to " The Biographical Cyclopaedia of 
Representative Men of Rhode Island," and for 
some account of his ancestry, to the " Memoir 
concerning French Settlements in Rhode Island 
and Providence Plantations," by the Hon. Elisha 
R. Potter. 



A. P, 



Providence, R. I. 
July, 1883. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

MEMOIR 7 



Bolices of tl)c JPress. 

Providence Press, March i8, 1882 43 

Evening Bulletin, March iS, 1S82, — Hon. Zachariah 
Allen .. 

Evening Telegram, March 18, 1882, — A Good Man 

Gone \ ^g 

Providence Journal, March 20, 1S82, — The Late 

Zachariah Allen .g 

Providence Press, March 21, 1882, — Funeral of 

Zachariah Allen co 

Hartford Courant, March 27, 1882 c. 

Evening Transcript, Boston, March 20, 1882,— Recent 

Death 

Boston Daily Advertiser, March 20, 1S82, — A Use- 
ful Life ' . . . 

'Action of tl)e Hijobc Ksiani Uistrrricai i^ocictn. 

Address of Professor Gammell 

Memorial Minute • • 59 

Address of Ex-Governor William W. Hoppin ..." 66 
Remarks of the Rt. Rev. Thomas M. Clark, D D * 68 
Letter of the Rev. E. M. Stone, Late Librarian of 
the Society .... 

72 



6 CONTENTS. 

Remarks of Mr. Amos Perry 73 

Remarks of Charles E. Carpenter, Esq 75 

Remarks of Mr. James N. Arnold 76 

Remarks of J. Erastus Lester, Esq ']-] 

Remarks of Judge Stiness 80 

Letter of the Hon. Francis Brinley 81 

Letter of Geo. C. Mason, Esq 82 

Action of (©tl)cr ^ocietiee, dr. 

Action of the Providence Franklin Society ... 83 
Providence Association of Mechanics and Manufac- 
turers 90 

Providence Public Library 91 

Engineers' Association 91 

Providence Veteran Firemen's Association .... 92 

Action of the Oxford Huguenot Memorial Society 93 

Massachusetts Historical Society 94 

Letter from Edward Atkinson, Esq 96 

Letter from Professor William B. Rogers .... 96 
Lines by the Hon. Charles Thurber, of Brooklyn, 

N.Y 98 

Letter from Reuben A. Guild, LL.D., of Brown 

University 99 

Dr. Beekman's Letter 100 

Dr. Shepard's Letter loi 

Letter from Edward Atkinson, Esq 102 

Letter of Benjamin Abbot, LL.D 105 

Evening Post, New York, March 24, 1882 .... 105 

Letter from Mr. Stephen Roper 106 



List of Mr. Allen's Publications 107 

Letters and Totems of Indian Tribes 109 



MEMOIR. 



ST^e Ixeinarkabic Scope of a Bcoati anb Earnest ILife. 



nPHE close of a long and eminently useful 
life suggests inquiries which may well en- 
gage the attention of those who are entering 
upon the stage of action as well as of those 
who are passing from it. With the view of 
gratifying readers who desire to make the most 
of their opportunities and privileges, the writer 
proposes to give a hasty outline of the life, and 
especially of the early career, of the late distin- 
guished president of the Rhode Island Histor- 
ical Society, the Hon. Zachariah Allen, LL.D., 
who died suddenly Friday evening, March 17, 
1882. The day of his departure had been de- 
voted to his usual studies and pursuits ; and he 
appeared as bright and cheerful as most men 



8 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

when beginning their career.^ He was always 
interested in passing events, taking part in what- 
ever he thought calculated to benefit society. 

His father, Zachariah Allen,^ was a man of 
great enterprise, energy, and executive ability ; 
but Mr. Allen was deprived of a father and a 
father's counsel while yet a child. 

The earliest event imprinted on his memory 
was the pageant of General Washington's fu- 
neral ; the next was the funeral of his own father, 
which took place in April, iSoi, when he was 
five years of age. 

He was thus left to the care of his mother, 
who was the daughter of Joseph Crawford ^ and 
Suzanne Bernon. She was a woman of remarka- 
ble loveliness and intelligence as well as beauty, 
and led him with a gentle but firm hand through 
trying scenes. She was to him the perfection 
of woman, — a mother, the thought of whom never , 
failed to awaken sentiments of gratitude, and to 

^ See Letter of R. A. Guild, LL.D., Librarian of Brown 
University, p. 99. 

2 He was a large shipowner, extensively engaged in commerce 
with the West Indies and other countries, and at his death left a 
large estate. 

^ The Crawfords were among the early settlers of Providence, 
and owned a plantation that extended fi-om where Crawford Street 
Bridge now stands to Hope Street. 



MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 9 

call forth his benedictions ; and yet his most 
vivid recollections of her face were coupled with 
an act of self-will and revolt on his part. 

He asked on one occasion some favor which she 
refused to grant, and while he was trying to argue 
the case and bend her will to his, he petulantly 
said : " Now mother, unless you let me do this I 
shall go out and let the water from the spout [it 
was raining] run right down my back." Seeing his 
mother remain firm he kept his word ; and, as the 
chilling water trickled down his back, turning his 
eyes upward he caught a full view of her, laughing 
at him, as she gazed from a window above. 

That look was stamped upon his memory. 
The impression of that countenance was clear 
and distinct nearly fourscore years later, when 
Mr. Allen related the incident, concluding the 
narrative thus : " My mother laughed at my folly, 
and I was rebuked and subdued." 

He was furnished in his boyhood with a chest 
of tools for mechanical purposes, and had the 
ran^e of his mother's attic for the exercise of his 
ingenuity, as well as for various sports too often 
sought by children outside the parental roof. 
Once, when telling the story of his early days, 
Mr. Allen placed great stress on the influence 



lO MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

of this home arrangement. The attic became in 
time a laboratory, where experiments in chemistry 
and philosophy were tried. There a library was 
gathered and instruction gained. Indeed, there 
he formed the tastes and habits which were ever 
afterwards a source of satisfaction, sowing the seed, 
and preparing for a harvest of which only the be- 
ginning is seen in the present life. He traversed 
the fields for geological and botanical specimens, 
acquiring a knowledge that served him in later 
years. He gazed with wonder and admiration at 
the starry heavens, learning the names of the va- 
rious constellations, and at the same time faith- 
fully pursuing the course of study marked out by 
his teachers. 

When eleven 3^ears old he was taken in a car- 
riage to the famous academy at Exeter, N. H., 
then under the direction of Benjamin Abbot, to 
prepare for college. The scene enacted when he 
was left among strangers for the first time has 
been described by himself. He watched the car- 
riage till it was out of sight ; then, as he sat on 
the doorstep weeping, he made up his mind that 
if he wanted to be happy himself, he must try to 
make those about him happy. Detached accounts 
of his school life have been handed down, from 



MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. n 

which we learn that he was quiet, orderly, and 
studious in his habits, and was much loved by his 
teachers ' and schoolmates. 

The matron, with whom he boarded in Exeter, 
related in this city, nearly half a century later, 
anecdotes showing the profound impression made 
upon her mind by the boy, whom she described as 
having fine features, clear blue eyes, and flaxen 
ringlets, and as being as good as he was beautiful. 
He gained the full advantages of his school, and 
had through life pleasant recollections of that 
early period. 

In 1862 he visited Exeter, with the Rev. 
Augustus Woodbury of this city, to attend, the 
dedication of the new building. Mr. Woodbury 
concludes a letter, written in reply to inquiries, 
as follows : — 

" The old building at Exeter had been de- 
stroyed by fire, and the expense of the erection 
of the new structure was met by voluntary con- 
tributions from the Alumni. Mr. Allen, I think, 
gave one hundred dollars. He greatly enjoyed 
the occasion, although, of course, he did not meet 
many of his contemporaries. He remained over 
night, and spent most of the following day in 

1 See Letter of Benjamin Abbot, p. 105. 



12 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

revisiting the scenes of his youthful studies and 
sports. He often spoke of the occasion subse- 
quently, with especial interest." 

He safely and happily passed the ordeal of a 
boarding-school, and, being fitted for college, was 
admitted a member of the freshman class of 
Brown University, September, 1809, just a year 
after the death of his mother, whose place in the 
family was in some degree filled by an elder sis- 
ter. During his collegiate course, the attic which 
served so good a purpose at an earlier period was 
ever a delightful retreat. 

Referring once to his college days, Mr. Allen 
spoke thus : " Seats of learning are not always 
the abodes of wisdom, as I had occasion to ob- 
serve when I was in college. Young men enter- 
tained false and pernicious ideas, one of which 
was that the use of spirituous liquors is favorable 
to genius and learning. The poet Horace was 
quoted as countenancing libations to Bacchus." 
From the effects of such ideas he was saved, 
as he thought, by home influence. He preferred 
quiet pleasures to those more commonly sought 
among boon companions, where well-filled de- 
canters were considered indispensable. With a 
well-balanced mind he faithfully followed the 



MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 13 

course of study marked out by the college 
authorities. He however, did not confine him- 
self to the college routine, but indulged his 
early-developed taste for mechanics, chemistry, 
and natural philosophy, and thus unconsciously 
prepared himself for what proved to be his 
special career. In the Commencement pro- 
gramme at his graduation, his name was at- 
tached to twelve theses chymia;. He had the 
fifth part in the order of exercises, reciting an 
essay on the Patronage of Literature. He 
belonged to a class of thirty-five young men, 
some of whom made their mark at the bar, on 
the bench, and in the pulpit ; among whom were 
Joseph K. Angell, Job Durfee, Romeo Elton, Joel 
Hawes, Enoch Pond, John Ruggles, and Thomas 
Shepard, all of whom have passed to 

" The undiscovered country, from whose bourn 
No traveller returns." 

Mr. Allen's college course served but as the be- 
ginning of an extended preparation for the work 
of life. The three leading professions, law, medi- 
cine, and theology, received his attention. The 
latter, the science that treats of the existence, 
nature, and attributes of God, and his relations to 



14 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

man, — not the system of dogmas represented by 
the schools and the dominies of the day, — he re- 
garded as surpassing all other professions and 
pursuits in interest and importance. His soul 
was moved by the sublime utterances of the 
Psalmist and the simple teachings of Christ. He 
recognized God in his works and in his Word, — 
ever maintaining a reverential spirit, as he looked 
" through nature up to nature's God." 

Mr. Allen's appreciation of the medical profes- 
sion was shown by his availing himself of the 
privileges of the Medical School of Brown Univer- 
sity, where he attended the lectures and pursued 
the studies prescribed for graduates; and at their 
close he received a certificate of proficiency, 
which is still preserved, x-^t a late meeting of 
the Historical Society he stated that the knowl- 
edge thus gained proved of great service through 
his subsequent life. 

He preferred medicine as his profession, because 
it afforded a certain field of usefulness and inves- 
tigation which he desired to enter, — a field where 
his habit of observation, his taste for science, and 
his extraordinary power of analysis and generali- 
zation could be turned to account. To be a 
physician of the highest order, preventing and 



MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 15 

relieving the suffering of his fellow-men, was his 
ambition. His studies in Brown University 
Medical School awakened a desire for a more 
advanced course of instruction, under more favora- 
ble auspices, in the famous Medical School of 
Edinburgh, Scotland. This project was not ac- 
complished, on account of the opposition of his 
guardian, who proposed a career that did not re- 
quire foreign travel and study. He yielded, but 
always regretted the change, often remarking in 
his later years : " That was the greatest disappoint- 
ment of my life." 

He entered a law office, that of the late 
Senator James Burrill, and was as devoted to 
his studies as if law were to be the field of his life- 
work. He was admitted to the bar, and, having 
taste and ability for legal discussions, and the nice 
discrimination required for successful practice, he 
seemed for a considerable time thoroughly wedded 
to the legal profession. He was, indeed, endowed 
with genius not inferior to that of some of the 
ablest men of the legal profession in Rhode 
Island, and would, doubtless, but for the bias 
acquired in his juvenile laboratory, have rivalled 
them in their keen repartee, masterly eloquence, 
varied learning, and flashing wit ; which he appre- 



1 6 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

ciated, and, in later years, portrayed to the delight 
of his numerous friends. 

Mr. Allen began public service at an early 
period. In 1 813, immediately after his graduation 
at college, he co-operated with patriotic citizens in 
preparing the town of Providence to repel, by 
means of hastily constructed forts and palisades, 
attacks from the British by water, which were then 
feared. Having been formall}^ appointed Secre- 
tary of the Committee of Defence, he corre- 
sponded with engineers and military men in 
regard to the best means of securing the ends 
sought. He gave at one time, before the Histor- 
ical Society, an oral account of the labors of this 
committee, no adequate record of which is pre- 
served. Referring to his military experience on 
this occasion, he playfully represented himself as 
a veteran of the War of 181 2. Conspicuous re- 
mains of the skill and labor of this committee are 
still visible on Fort Hill, and at several points on 
the west side of Providence River ; and an official 
report of the fortifications on Fort Hill, addressed 
by Mr. Allen to the late Governor Fenner, is still 
preserved. 

Once, while speaking of the stirring events 
that occurred in the autumn of 1S13, he depicted 



MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 17 

the scene that he witnessed on the arrival in 
Providence of the news of Perry's victory on 
Lake Erie. He was on Market Square when 
the messenger arrived on horseback. The news 
spread like wildfire. Guns were fired, drums and 
fifes were brought forth, and the principal streets 
were paraded and enlivened with music and 
shouting. In the evening there was a general 
illumination by means of bonfires, and various 
contrivances were adopted to express the general 
joy. 

In 181 7 Mr. Allen was married to Eliza Har- 
riet, daughter of Welcome Arnold, Esq., who is 
represented by Tristram Burges as " one of the 
most disting:uished merchants and statesmen of 
his time." This happy union continued till the 
death of Mrs. Allen in 1873. Three daughters 
survive to cherish and perpetuate the memory 
of their parents. 

Not lonq; after his marrias^e Mr. Allen made 
a tour to the West, noting incidents that oc- 
curred, and the condition of the country through 
which he passed. 

It was the year after Indiana, then regarded 
as the terminus of civilization, was admitted into 
the Union. There were few stage-coaches, and 



1 8 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

means of communication and conveyance were 
difficult. He went in his own carnage as far 
as Washington, travelling thirty miles a day. 
There he sent back, with his carriage, all un- 
necessary luggage, and, purchasing saddle-horses, 
saddles, and saddle-bags, adopted the usual con- 
veyance of travellers going West. The National 
Road over the mountains was incomplete, and 
was badly worn by the passage, in the course 
of one year, of more than twelve thousand teams 
of six or eight horses each. Pittsburg con- 
tained then but five thousand inhabitants. As 
there were at that time no steamboats runnino- 
regularly on the Ohio, he adopted the usual 
mode of descending that stream, in rectangu- 
lar boxes, which, though called arks, strongly re- 
sembled cattle-pens. They were made of rough 
plank, twenty or twenty-five feet long, with flat 
bottoms, and the joints all caulked with tow. 
Two families, composed of gentlemen and ladies, 
procured two arks, one of which served for their 
horses, and the other for themselves and their 
luggage. The scenes witnessed during that voy- 
age have been more than once described by Mr. 
Allen for the amusement of his friends. He 
noted the fact that he did not see a steamboat 



MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 



19 



during his sail down the Ohio, and that he saw 
later the first stage-coach ever in Kentucky, — a 
coach which was then running between Lexing- 
ton and Louisville. Its posts, that were made 
to sustain the covered top, broken off and stick- 
ing up like shattered masts, presented a truly 
grotesque appearance, caused by the unskilful 
driver's neglect to take account of the height 
of his vehicle, while passing under the spreading 
branches of a stately oak. 

This Western tour gave Mr. Allen a vivid idea 
of the riches and grandeur of our country, and 
stimulated his desire to become instrumental in 
the development of its varied resources. His 
later European tours made him acquainted with 
the progress of science and art in the Old World, 
and enabled him to exert an extended influence, 
by means of his publications, in diffusing a knowl- 
edge of inventions and discoveries calculated to 
advance the interests of this country. He made 
the acquaintance of several leading scientific men 
and philosophers, including Professors Faraday 
and Owen, whose attentions he highly appreci- 
ated. The former showed him, in 1852, the origi- 
nal simple apparatus used by Sir Humphrey Davy 
in discovering the new metals sodium and potas- 



20 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

slum, and explained to him some curious experi- 
ments in regard to the action of magnetic forces. 

Mr. Allen early took part in the deliberations 
of the town council of Providence. In 1824 he 
was one of the town's committee to receive and 
entertain Lafayette ; and the way in which he 
discharged this duty is best learned from his 
paper on Lafayette, read before the Rhode Island 
Historical Society in March, 1861, and printed 
shortly afterwards. 

He exerted a leading influence in the move- 
ment which resulted in the geological survey of 
the State, made by Dr. Charles T. Jackson, in 
1839; and he did his utmost in 1875, through 
a report as State Commissioner, to secure an- 
other survey, more extensive, accurate, and thor- 
ough. Indeed, very few worthy public enterprises 
of his day can be named which did not receive 
his support. He noted passing events with the 
view of turning them to the best account. As 
Providence was his native place and his lifelong 
home, to promote its growth, beauty, and pros- 
perity, he was ever ready to put forth his best 
efforts. He saw it first as a town of seven thou- 
sand inhabitants, and latterly as a city of one 
hundred and sixteen thousand. He noted its 



MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 21 

changes in a philosophical spirit. In a visit to 
Prospect Terrace, shortly before his death, he 
pointed out to the writer the spot where the 
great ship Ganges, driven by the gale o£ Sep- 
tember 23, 1 81 5, lay for years on the north side 
of the Cove Basin. His early and his late efforts 
to have the Cove Park protected from corporate 
greed, as well as from noisome vapors, and thus 
serve as breathing space, or, in his chosen phrase, 
as " the lungs of the city," ' are readily recalled. 
He saw here, in his mind's eye, a population of 
more than two hundred thousand souls, for whom 
breathing'-space should be provided and made 
pure in the centre of the city, as well as on 
its heights and in its suburbs. He rejoiced in 
the newly proposed park, on the French Camp 
Ground, as an addition to, not as a substitute 
for, the broad, open area of land and water in 
the heart of the city. 

Mr. Allen will ever be remembered as a brave 
and gallant man, who, courteous and gentle as 
he habitually was, cared more for principles than 

1 " Edmund Burke, in his speech against selling some of the 
parks of London, called them the Lungs of the Metropolis. 
That single word decided the question ; for it was fact, argument, 
and illustration, all in one." — Orville Dewev, in Old World 
and Nezu, vol. ii. p. 19. 



2 2 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

for forms and ceremonies. He was a man of per- 
fect physical and moral courage, who spoke what 
he thought, and stood by his convictions of right. 
He was a law-abiding man. Always a ready and 
firm upholder of civil government, he came to its 
support with arms in hand on three several occa- 
sions : viz., in the Hardscrabble riot of 1824; in 
the Olney Street and Snowtown riots of 1831; 
and in the Dorr War of 1842. In any public 
concern he showed his colors, spoke his word, 
and did his duty manfully. 

He led and sustained the movement to have 
the Historical Cabinet kept open, and its va- 
rious collections reduced to order and made to 
subserve the best interests of the City and State. 
He will be greatly missed at the meetings of 
the Historical Society, where his presence was 
a benediction, and at the meetings of the Frank- 
lin Society, in which he took a lively interest. 
Indeed, the Fire Department, to which he used 
to belong ; the Association of Mechanics and 
Manufacturers, of which he was at one time presi- 
dent ; Brown University, of which he was trustee 
for fifty-six years, — and many other like institu- 
tions, — will feel keenly his loss. He was a 
Rhode Islander of Rhode Islanders, entering the 



MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 23 

lists as a champion of religious liberty, and hurl- 
ing back reproaches that had been heaped upon 
the founders of our State. He did much to 
awaken interest in the study of local institutions, 
and to cause Rhode Island history to be studied 
and appreciated. In his last annual address as 
president of the Historical Society, a paper that 
does his head and heart credit, he makes an ear- 
nest appeal to the members of that institution to 
see that Rhode Island history is truly set forth. 
Most of his late historical writings have had this 
object in view; prominent among which is his 
address to the Historical Society, at the bicenten- 
nial of the burning of Providence, April 10, 1876, 
on the Rhode Island System of Treatment of the 
Indians and of establishing Civil and Religious 
Liberty.^ 

Mr. Allen's lifelong regard for the resting- 
places and memories of the dead is noteworthy. 
He faithfully served for thirty-two years as a 
commissioner of the North Burial-ground. He 
twice secured the enlargement of the ground, 
and effected marked changes in its general as- 
pect and condition. He tastefully laid out and 
adorned the plateau containing the ashes of his 

- See Letter of Dr. James W. Beekman, p. 100. 



24 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

family and ancestors, and designated the spot 
where his own body should finally rest. He 
caused to be erected the beautiful bronze tablet 
on the walls of St. John's Church, to the memory 
of his Huguenot ancestor, Gabriel Bernon,^^ and 
built the tomb over his remains in the vaults 
beneath the church. He turned his benevolent 
regard to the original proprietors of this country, 
the rude Sons of the Forest. He pointed out the 
wrongs and outrages to which they had been sub- 
jected. He invoked sympathy for their suffer- 
ings; and in response to his address before the 
Historical Society, April lo, 1876, he had the 
satisfaction of receiving the official congratula- 
tions of two distant tribes in the Dominion of 
Canada, the Ojibways and the Pottawatamies," 
who, in their distant lodges, " shook hands with 
him in their hearts." He aided in erecting 
monuments to Massasoit and King Philip, and 
in markinof sites of historic interest in Bristol, 
Kingston, Warren, and Rehoboth. He favored 
the preservation of the Indian Pottery Works 
at the Soapstone Ledge in Johnston, and the 

1 Gabriel Bernon's sister Marie married Benjamin Faneuil. 
Their son Peter built Faneuil Hall, Boston. 

2 See official letters and Totems of these tribes. 



MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 



25 



erection of the French Memorial in the North 
Burial-ground. He wrote memorials of La- 
fayette and Roger Williams, and did his best 
to secure, in connection with the Roger Wil- 
liams Monument Association, a worthy monu- 
ment to the latter. He sought to benefit the 
erring and the criminal, serving for years, in 
company with his friend Dr. Wayland, as a 
member of the Board of Inspectors of the State 
Prison. He was a promoter of many worthy 
causes, an active and honorary member of many 
scientific, literary, and benevolent institutions; 
and was, at the time of his death, the president 
of four public societies. 

Mr. Allen never forgot that he was once a 
child. Retaining to the last a distinct recollec- 
tion of childhood, — its trials and its triumphs, 
its joys and its sorrows, — he was drawn towards 
children, and led to give them the benefit of his 
manifest sympathy and friendship. To answer 
their inquiries he would often greatly incommode 
himself. When urged not to allow children to 
interrupt his studies with their questions, his ready 
reply was : " I must answer them now lest they 
lose their interest, and the opportunity to gratify 
and benefit them be gone forever." Through life 



26 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

it was his pleasure and his habit to associate 
much with children and young people. He was 
intimate and familiar with them, — joining in their 
plays and sports, manifesting interest in their 
studies and plans of life, and largely partaking 
of their spirit. The correspondence which he 
kept up with juvenile friends would be regarded 
by most people as a tax upon their time and 
energy. To him it was a pleasure and a means 
of renewing his youth. He acted upon the prin- 
ciple that no one has a right to mingle in society 
unless he can lay aside his personal ills, and say 
or do something for the pleasure and gratification 
of his associates. Accordingly, whatever circle 
he entered, he wore no knit brow, cast no shadow, 
marred no pleasure, and caused no restraint, but 
rather invited freedom and ease, and imparted 
life, light, and joy. In this way he became a 
favorite. His company was sought and prized. 
His conversation and manners were suited to 
each occasion. In his presence no one thought 
of age. Indeed, he seemed on many occasions 
the personification of youth and manhood. He 
abounded in life, hope, and energy, and was wont 
to entertain his friends with pleasing fancies, and 
narrations of the past. 



MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 27 

The following letters, one of which was written 
about a year and the other about a month before 
his death, will sufficiently illustrate his happy 
methods of amusing and instructing the young. 
Another letter, received by his youthful corre- 
spondent, through the mail, after his death, is 
reluctantly omitted. 

Providence, March 21st, 1881. 

My Darling Great-grand-daughter, — Oh, what 
was my surprise on receiving a well-written letter signed 
with your name ! Really, I could hardly believe my 
eyes. 

I was so glad to get such a letter, for another good 
reason, because the person who could write one such 
letter, I felt sure could keep on writing more. 

Now I shall expect a nice letter from you every 
once in a while, when you can spare time from your 
studies. 

I should like to know one thing, — who taught you 
to write so well ? Just tell me in your next letter. 

We are all well ; but alas ! our dear little skye terrier 
has closed his eyes in a sleep that knows no waking. 
We all shed tears when we buried him in the ground 
by the side of his friend, little Prince. I made a cof- 
fin for him. and W. placed beautiful flowers by his side. 
On his body was a piece of white cloth, that veiled him 
from our sight, while we were looking down tearfully 
upon his little humble form, which once bore as faithful 
and loving a heart as ever beat in a mortal bosom. 



28 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

When you come to Providence I will lead you to the 
spot where he sleeps beneath the verdant turf ; but 
when we placed him there, a white bank of snow 
made it more sad to us, as a cold bed for his last 
repose. 

But it is pleasant to remember his goodness, now he 
is gone ; as it is also to remember good children after 
they are laid in the cold ground. 

Come soon to see 

Your old and loving grandfather, 

ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

Providence, Feb. 7th, 18S2. 

Darling Great-grand-daughter, — Does it not 
sound magnificent to call you a Great, Grand Daugh- 
ter, when all the time I know you are my dear little 
darling } 

I am thankful your dog did not take a deathly cold 
by sleeping all night in a snowdrift. Do you know 
that near the pole of the earth, where snow and ice are 
more plenty than wood and bricks, the people build 
crystal houses of blocks of ice, and sleep in them every 
night, very comfortably ? And also the great polar 
bears make a lodging under snowdrifts, and never stir 
out all winter long, until the warm spring comes. 

They take one long nap that lasts all winter. Is it 
not charming to think of such pure white sheets of snow - 
for bedclothes, that never require to be washed, — with a 
great saving of soap and boiling ? 

I am delighted that you are fond of arithmetic. I 
suppose you intended to show me how you go walking 



MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 29 

to school, studying a book all the way, as represented by 
a picture in the upper corner of your letter. 

How pleasant it will be to you to have a whole 
room by yourself! You can set your alarm-clock to 
get up every morning at sunrise, and begin studying 
arithmetic. 

Your Aunt C. will take you this letter, if she ventures 
to go after this great snowstorm ; but she is alarmed 
by your account of the big drifts, and declines the 
pleasure of sleeping in one, hke the dog. 

I write immediately to answer your agreeable letter, 
because I know you expect an immediate reply ; and it 
is always proper to answer letters promptly. Please 
give my love to all your lovely family, and believe 
me ever 

Faithfully yours, 

ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

Mr. Allen was strengthened and sustained by 
hope, faith, and charity. His creed was that of 
the Protestant Episcopal Church. His highest 
ideas of reliQ:ion were drawn from Christ's Sermon 
on the Mount, and from the 14th and 15th chap- 
ters of John's Gospel. He believed the Creator 
of the universe to be benevolent ; and that he 
would in his own time and way bring order out 
of disorder, light and form out of darkness and 
chaos, hope out of despair, good out of evil, and 
life out of death. Accordingly he dwelt on the 



30 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

bright side of life and sought the bright side of 
every subject. When dark pictures were brought 
to his notice he chose to view them in the most 
favorable light. Of wrongs and injuries he sought 
to understand the motive and the cause, and ex- 
ercised tact and skill in their removal. He had 
observed and pointed out violations of the rights 
of humanity, and of domestic animals, long before 
the organization of societies for the prevention 
of cruelty. 

In his repeated travels abroad he enjoyed op- 
portunities for extended observation, which he 
did not fail to improve. While in Greece he 
saw one day a man riding on a donkey, while his 
wife trudged along by his side with a load of 
brushwood on her head. Indignant at such a 
spectacle, he told his dragoman to say to the 
man that such a sight as that could not be seen 
in America. The man coolly replied : " Tell that 
gentleman that he must be a stranger here, or 
he would know that in Greece women are plenty, 
but donkeys are scarce." When in Constan- 
tinople he saw a procession of children singing 
in the streets ; and, asking what it meant, the 
dragoman said they were scholars escorting a 
new member from his home to the school, with 



MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 



31 



songs and expressions of good-will, and that this 
was the customary congratulation and escort. Mr. 
Allen often referred to this most kindly welcome, 
as being far more consistent with civilization and 
Christianity, than the sophomoric practice, preva- 
lent in American colleges, of hazing freshmen, 
and compelling them to endure indignity and 
outrage. 

He was habitually averse to harsh and severe 
measures and doctrines. He drew a nice line of 
distinction between the Pilgrims of Plymouth and 
the Puritans of Massachusetts Bay. The former 
he held in high esteem, while the latter, with some 
noble exceptions, failed to command his respect. 
The stricture of John Ouincy Adams, wherein 
Roger Williams was arraigned for conscientious 
contumaciousness, drew from him on one occa- 
sion a scorching rebuke, and a vindication of the 
right of Williams to share with Eliot the honor 
of being the pioneer missionary to the Indians. 
The Puritans, he said, bore sway in New Eng- 
land during the early period, arraigning and 
condemning whom they would and could before' 
magistrates and councils ; and now he thought 
it full time that they should in turn be arraigned 
before the bar of History. He would allow no 



32 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

excuse for their treatment of Miantinomi, Samuel 
Gorton, and Mary Dyer. 

The ground of Mr. Allen's support of the gen- 
eral policy pursued from the first by the Rhode 
Island and Providence Plantations, and of his 
opposition to the system of persecution adopted 
against both Rhode Islanders and Indians, by 
the neighboring colonies, is best understood 
by reference to his Bicentennial Discourse. It 
was to him a cheering sign that the later writers 
of Massachusetts — jurists, statesmen, and histo- 
rians — already acknowledge the folly and cru- 
elty of that persecution, and view subjects of long 
and bitter controversy in a truer light. Chief- 
Justice Story says: — 

The fundamental error of our ancestors, an error 
which began with the settlement of the colony, was a 
doctrine which has since been happily exploded, — I 
mean the necessity of a union between Church and 
State. To this they clung as to the Ark of their 
safety. . . . 

The arm of the Civil Government was constantly em- 
ployed in support of the denunciations of the Church ; 
and without its forms, the Inquisition existed in sub- 
stance, with a full share of its terrors and its violence. 

There was indeed far more caution in shedding 
human blood ; but there was scarcely less indulgence 
for human error. 



MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 33 

It has also been said, with as much truth as 
force, by one of the most eloquent of modern di- 
vines, that " This boasted alliance between Church 
and State, on which so many encomiums have 
been lavished, seems to have been little more than 
a compact, between the priest and the magistrate, 
to betray the liberties of mankind, both civil and 
religious." 

Mr. Allen was remarkable for the wide range 
of his intellect, for the extent, variety, and exact- 
ness of his information, and for his readiness and 
ability to communicate the results of his re- 
searches and to awaken sentiments akin to his 
own. It was difficult to introduce a subject on 
which he was not prepared to shed light by his 
well-considered remarks. He was for years the 
Mentor of Providence. In cases of difficulty, 
doubt, or danger, he was often consulted, and 
never hesitated to speak his views. When 
important enterprises were brought forward, 
he was always prepared to aid them, or en- 
counter them with a logical force not readily 
withstood. His various reports in connection 
with the fire department of Providence would 
occupy much space, and be an interesting chap- 
ter in his life. What he did for the introduction 

3 



34 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

of water/ the part he took in perfecting the 
steam-engine, his instrumentaUty in establishing 
a system of mutual fire-insurance " for mill prop- 
erty, and his views with regard to needed sani- 
tary measures in the heart of our city, are 
matters of history. He was wont to make 
careful investigations, and draw from his stores 
of knowledge, giving the public the benefit of 
his mature thought. 

His varied information and remarkable mem- 
ory were often shown at meetings of the Histori- 
cal Society, when he followed the reading of 
carefully prepared papers with remarks that were 
entertaining alike to the lecturer and the audi- 
ence. The author of Cosmos could repeat from 
memory the name of every member of the dif- 
ferent presidential cabinets of the United States, 
from the time of Washington down. Mr. Allen 
was perhaps less observant of the cabinets and po- 
litical machinery of the country, but his memory 
was no less tenacious of the names and acts of 

1 At the public ceremony on the introduction of water into the 
city, Thanksgiving Day, 1871, his Honor, Mayor Doyle, called 
upon Mr. Allen, as " The Father of the Water-works," to let on 
the water. This public recognition of his services in that import- 
ant enterprise was highly appreciated. 

'- See Letter of Edward Atkinson, Esq., p. 96. 



MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 



35 



the statesmen who effected the Q:reat chanees 
in the policy of our government. His strength 
was in the direction of scientific truth. In- 
ventors and inventions, the various branches of 
industry, the advancement of his city and State, 
the progress of science, and the great prob- 
lems of nature engrossed his attention ; and 
in discussing these subjects, his memory and 
his intellectual acquisitions appeared to best 
advantage. 

In his efforts to attain the full measure of man- 
hood, by the discipline of his mind and the ac- 
quirement of knowledge, he acted in accordance 
with the old adage : " To be accurate, write 
much; to be well-informed, read much ; to have 
the power of ready expression, converse much." 
Thus, with the view of mental discipline, accurate 
and extended knowledge, and power to communi- . 
cate, he wrote, read, and conversed, and devoted 
his energies to the public good ; often remarking, 
as he pursued this course, that " He who will 
work for nothing and find himself, will never lack 
employment." 

Mr. Allen was a literary as well as a scientific 
man. Books were to him a solace and a delight, 
as well as a means of instruction. They were 



36 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

ever at hand, and every spare moment was de- 
voted to them. He retained his zest for the 
ancient classics, often showing his famiHarity with 
them by quotations and analyses of language. 
He also took a lively interest in the literature 
of the day, occasionally surprising young friends 
by the extent and variety of his reading, and 
sometimes amusing them by repeating from mem- 
ory gems of poetry or striking passages from 
famous orations. 

His mind was naturally exercised over difficult 
problems of science.^ While visiting the Falls 
of Niagara, in 1841, he undertook and carried out 
the first systematic measurement ever made of the 
flow of that mighty river and of the power to be 
derived from the Falls.^ He shrank from no 
hardship or danger in the work, and the record 
of its results is preserved in Silliman's American 
Journal of Science, for April, 1844. His advice 
was frequently sought as a man of science and an 

^ See New York Evening Post, p. 105. 
2 Quantity of water at Niagara Falls : — 

22,440,000 cubic feet per minute, 

701,250 tons per minute, 

4) 533)334 «<^/«<7/ horse-power. 

From Niagara to the sea, 24,000,000 horse-power. 

Fall from Lake Erie to Lake Ontario, 331 feet. 

Fall from Lake Ontario to the sea, 234 feet. 



MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 37 

inventor ; ^ and he oft-times turned aside from his 
usual pursuits to assist the discouraged in per- 
fecting inventions that in time proved to be use- 
ful, and sometimes to explain to over-sanguine 
persons why their inventions, or conceits, must 
fail to produce the results sought. Electricity 
was early a favorite study, and it was one of the 
last studies in which he was engaged. His theo- 
ries on that subject, explained in his last impor- 
tant work, on Solar Light and Heat, drew forth 
favorable comments from advanced scientific men 
on both sides of the ocean ; and a second edition 
of this book was promptly issued to supply the 
demand.^ 

He was, like his Huguenot ancestors, habitu- 
ally hopeful and cheerful. However dark the 
night or mysterious the event, he saw rays of 
light, and ground for hope and comfort. Ten 
months before his departure, after hurrying on a 
bright spring Sunday morning to the church of 
which he was a lifelong attendant and a commu- 
nicant, he was oppressed by the closeness of the 
atmosphere, and fainted. On reviving he said, as 
if entertaining a pleasant thought : " Why could 

1 See Letter of Stephen Roper, Engineer, p. 106. 
- See List of Mr. Allen's Publications, p. 107. 



38 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

I not have made my exit from the church ? It 
would have been a good place to die in." The 
following Tuesday afternoon he came into the 
Historical Cabinet, with the freshness, vigor, and 
gayety of a young man, saying: "This morning 
Professor Gammell [senior vice-president] called 
on me, and, after expressing solicitude about the 
state of my health, offered to take charge of the 
meeting this evening, and really urged me to re- 
main quiet at home. Out of respect for him I had 
to adopt some measure to find out the state of my 
health. So I set off and walked first to Olney- 
ville. I then retraced my steps, and attended a fu- 
neral with you [the librarian] on Moore Street. 
I then went, via Greenwich Street, to Roger 
Williams Park, and, crossing the Park grounds, 
came back through South Providence. Now, hav- 
ing taken this walk without weariness, I think I 
can sit an hour at the meeting this evening." 

The correctness of his conclusion was not 
questioned. 

On a more recent occasion he said, in reply 
to a word of congratulation on his good health : 
" Yes, I do enjoy good health, and I am grateful 
for it. Yet I am a minute-man, liable to go at 
any time, and the sooner the better ; but while 



MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 



39 



here I mean to make this machine run as 
smoothly as possible, in order to get out of it the 
utmost comfort and power." With this remark 
he tripped along his ample hall, showing the 
nimbleness and vivacity of youth, and then added : 
" Work and play, gayety and sobriety, have their 
place in the economy of this life." 

It was the wonder of his friends how he main- 
tained such elasticity of body and mind. To a 
lady, who made this inquiry shortly before his 
death, he promptly replied : " Why, madam, by 
keeping my body in temperance, soberness, and 
chastity, and eschewing the temptations of the 
world, the flesh, and the devil." 

In one of the writer's walks and talks with Mr. 
Allen, after he had become an octo2:enarian, in 
reply to the inquiry, " How do you keep yourself 
so fresh and healthy ? " he answered: " Each day 
I determine to make the best of myself. As the 
Wise Virgins in the parable reserved their oil 
for occasion of need, so I study to know when, 
how, and where I can best employ my powers 
of mind and body." 

Mr. Allen had a keen sense of the humorous, 
and a flow of spirits that must have some outlet, 
or, as he expressed it, a safety-valve. 



40 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

He was — like Baron Humboldt, whose charac- 
ter he greatly admired — exceedingly abstemious 
at the table, where it was his delight to sit and 
converse, in full view of the choicest viands ; and 
wines were for his guests rather than for himself. 
Tobacco in every form he loathed. Exercising a 
generous hospitality, he gathered under his roof 
and around his board persons of kindred tastes 
and j^ursuits, from far and near, making all feel 
at home and happy in the presence of one whose 
politeness and courtesy came fresh from the 
heart. 

In conclusion, it is worthy of remark that, 
while Mr. Allen's life was elevated and ennobled 
by his contact with the learned professions, 
his career was in the line of his early-acquired 
tastes for Natural Science and Mechanical Phi- 
losophy. 

To investigate, control, and convert the forces 
of nature to the use of man was his ambition, 
his mission. He believed that winds, waves, and 
electricity would be utilized, during the coming 
age, beyond any conception of the present gen- 
eration. Here, he was wont to say, is a bound- 
less domain that will more and more engage the 
attention of enlightened men. Into this field he 



MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 41 

bade aspirants to fame and honor enter and con- 
tend for the prize. Exhibitions of skill and en- 
terprise in this direction never failed to awaken 
his admiration and to draw forth expressions of 
encouragement. 

With great interest he compared the loom of 
Revolutionary times, and the machines employed 
by Samuel Slater in his first manufacturing 
experiments, with the wonderful inventions of 
the present day. 

Without disparaging the hand of ^sculapius, 
yet with a horror of the old saddle-bag prac- 
tice, he maintained that fountains of life and 
health exist in abundance all around us, and 
may and will be discovered. Only let the search 
be made, and the laws of life and health be 
studied and observed, and these blessings will 
be secured. 

In his later years a psalm of thanksgiving was 
ever in his heart, and these utterances often on 
his lips at eventide : " Blessings surround us on 
every side," " Thank God for another happy day," 
" I nightly pitch my moving tent a day's march 
nearer home." 

Full of hope — with faith in God, and in man 
as the child of God, for whom are prepared 



42 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

through Christ the heavenly mansions — he Hved 
a happy and useful life. 

He regarded death as a beneficent ordinance. 
It came as he had ever prayed it might, un- 
heralded, and bringing the longed-for rest. 

His last day was, as usual, devoted to active 
duty. On his return from a lecture in the eve- 
ning, while conversing with his daughter, he sat 
down, rested his head upon his hand, and " was 
not, for God took him." 

It was a golden sunset. Death was swallowed 
up in victory. 

" There is no death ! What seems so is transition ; 
This life of mortal breath 
Is but a suburb of the life Elysian, 
Whose portal we call death." 



NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 



7ACHARIAH ALLEN is dead. The blow comes 
to this community like a thunder-clap from a clear 
sky. The man who was the embodiment of life, energy, 
and public spirit has made his exit from the world when 
he seemed, though eighty-six and a half years old, but 
to have attained the vigor of his manhood. He was 
possessed of remarkable force and elasticity of mind 
and body, showing himself equal to any emergency. 
He was not only the President of the Historical Society 
of the State, but he had come to be regarded as one of 
the grandest historical characters of the present period. 
Modest, unostentatious, and manly, he accomplished a 
work that will cause his name to be handed down with 
honor by his fellow-citizens. He possessed that courage, 
breadth of vision, vivid fancy, and philosophic wisdom 
which made him the pride and delight, not only of the 
Society over which he presided, but of our entire com- 
munity. His sudden death, which occurred at his home 
on Magee Street, at 1 1 o'clock last night, will be 
mourned by countless friends, to whom he has become 
endeared during the many years of an upright and 



44 NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 

godly life. He attended the Stoddard lecture in Infantry 
Hall last evening, apparently in his usual health, and on 
his return home seated himself, and died without a 
struggle, with a smile on his serene countenance. He 
died, as he had frequently expressed the wish to die, 
calmly and quietly, in full possession of all his faculties, 
and with his soul at peace with God and man. Mr. 
Allen had throughout his long life been remarkably 
abstemious in his habits, had taken a great deal of out- 
of-door exercise, and had hardly been afflicted by a 
day's sickness since his early childhood. For half a 
century he had been a member of St. John's Episcopal 
church, was actively interested in all literary, historical, 
and scientific pursuits, even up to the time of his de- 
cease, and was prominently connected with a large num- 
ber of scientific and literary associations. — Providence 
Press, March i8, 1882. 



The Hon. Zachariah Allen, one of our most eminent 
and venerable citizens, died suddenly last night. He 
attended Stoddard's lecture at Infantry Hall, and felt so 
well that he declined to drive home with his family, 
preferring to walk. When he reached home, his daugh- 
ter met him in the hall, and asked him not to sit up and 
write that night, as was sometimes his wont. He pleas- 
antly responded that he would not, and while engaged 
in conversation he seated himself by a table, resting his 
head upon his hand a moment, and died without a 
struggle. He was in the eighty-seventh year of his 



•t5fc> 

ase. 



NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 
HON. ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

IMPROMPTU, ON HEARING OF HIS DEATH. 

He rests, the aged, honored man, 
Young to his latest breath. 
Strong even to his death, 

Firm as the bravest of the van. 

True champion of our State 
Whose history lie loved, 
Whose principles he proved 

From pulse of liberty innate. 

With broad, exploring scholarship, 

Untired beneficence 

Born of benevolence. 
He shared the highest fellowship. 

His heart, in generous, ceaseless beats, 
Genial as breath of spring, 
Buoyant as songster's wing, 

Still in life's mystic circle meets. 

Steadfast the valiant part he played 
In ranks of brotherhood, 
To build the common good, 

Till life's last order he obeyed. 

And now he finds his peaceful rest ; 
Though tears bedew his pall. 
His name, among us all. 
Is shrined, endeared, and blest. 

F. D. 
Evenitio BuUdiu, March i8, 1882. 



45 



46 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 



A GOOD MAN GONE. 

In the death of the Hon. Zachariah Allen, the city of 
Providence and the State of Rhode Island have endured 
a loss that cannot be replaced. As a scientist and in- 
ventor he had no superior in our State, and what he has 
done for the industries of Rhode Island and New 
England cannot be measured in money. — Evening 
Telegram, March i8, 1882. 



THE LATE ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

The sudden death of this venerable and distin- 
guished citizen is an event of unusual interest in the 
community in which he has always lived. He had 
attained to the age of eighty-six years and six months. 
No man now among the living has been so closely 
identified with the interests of Providence, and so inti- 
mately associated with the origin and early manage- 
ment of nearly all our most important institutions. A 
man of education and of varied attainments, of great 
intellectual activity, of rare public spirit, and at the 
same time of singular industry and economy in the 
use of time, he has written books and dissertations 
on a large variety of subjects, both scientific and his- 
torical, and has performed an amount of work for the 
promotion of public interests, such as perhaps has 
been recorded of no other citizen of the generation 
to which he belonged. 



NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 47 

Mr. Allen was born in Providence, Sept, 15, 1795, 
and was the son of Zachariah and Anne (Crawford) 
Allen. The family came from Dorsetshire, England, in 
1636. He graduated at Brown University in 1813, and, 
it is believed, was the latest survivor of his class. 
Among its members were Joseph K. Angell, Job Dur- 
fee, Romeo Elton, Joel Hawes, Enoch Pond, and Thom- 
as Shepard. Of these, Dr. Enoch Pond died in January 
last, at the age of ninety-one years, still at the head of 
the Theological Seminary in Bangor, Me. Mr. Allen 
studied law in the office of the Hon. James Burrill, and 
was admitted to the bar in 181 5, and has long been the 
senior member of the bar of Rhode Island. He also 
studied medicine at the medical school then connected 
with Brown University, and received from its professors 
a certificate which would have entitled him to a place 
in the profession, had he been disposed to use it. He, 
however, after a few years, decided to turn away from 
both these professions, and to engage in the business of 
manufacturing, which at that time was beginning to 
enlist very largely the capital of the State and the en- 
terprise of its citizens ; and in this business he continued 
to be actively engaged to the end of his life. 

But occupations like these, attractive as he found 
them to be, did not engross his entire attention. He 
early began to study the principles of mechanical 
science, on which this industry must depend for its suc- 
cessful prosecution. He prepared a treatise on Prac- 
tical Mechanics, which was long used by those whose 
pursuits demanded a knowledge of manufacturing ma- 
chinery. In 1825 he went to Europe to study the con- 



48 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

dition of woollen manufactures, and travelled in England, 
France, and Holland. The results of his observations in 
these countries were published in a work of two volumes, 
known as the " Practical Tourist." In subsequent years, 
his fondness for mechanical science led him to still 
higher inquiries, quite independent of the practical 
applications to which he at first gave his attention. In 
a work entitled " Philosophy of the Mechanics of Na- 
ture," published in 185 1, he grappled with some of 
those great problems of the material universe which 
Laplace had attempted to solve in the Mecaniqiie 
Celeste ; and in another work, published so recently as 
1879, and entitled "Solar Light and Heat," he again 
enters the same distant realms of scientific research. 
Both these volumes have been pronounced, by eminent 
men of science, works of singular acuteness and pro- 
found investigation. He has also written much on sub- 
jects connected with the history of Rhode Island, and 
has published volumes and tracts on " The Early Set- 
tlers of New England," " The Treatment of the Narra- 
gansett Indians," "The Suffrage Rebellion," and other 
kindred subjects, and has left many carefully prepared 
papers still unpublished. 

His intimate connection with the manufacturing 
interests of Rhode Island led him to inquire into the 
whole subject of manufacturing machinery, and also of 
water-power, and the best modes of its application and 
use. His fertile and suggestive mind was constantly 
contriving improvements, many of which were of great 
importance in the development of the industry to which 
they pertained. He was the original inventor of the 



NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 



49 



automatic cut-off valve for the steam-engine,^ an in- 
vention which was patented in 1833, and also of the 
extension rollers, which are still in general use in 
mills. He devised a mode of saving the surplus waters 
of the Wonasquatucket River, and originated the sys- 
tem of Mutual Insurance adopted by the great manu- 
facturing establishments of New England. He intro- 
duced into the Fire Department of the city the hydrau- 
lion engines, as they used to be called, — a very great 
improvement on their predecessors, — which were sub- 
sequently adopted in Boston and in other cities. He 
contrived a hot-air furnace for houses, even before the 
use of anthracite coal had become common. He also 
frequently contributed articles to scientific journals, 
making important suggestions which he had no leisure 
himself to carry into effect. 

If, from these scientific and literary labors, which he 
delighted to mingle with the cares of active business, 
we turn to the long series of services which he has ren- 
dered to the higher interests of the community, we 
discern still more clearly the fibre of his character and 
the controlling forces of his life. Avoiding, as far as 
possible, all official positions, he has rendered very im- 
portant services in promoting every judicious enterprise 
and every valuable institution which has had its origin 
among us in his lifetime. He early served in the Town 
Council, as Judge of Probate, and as a Representative 
in the General Assembly. He was one of the earliest 
advocates and one of the most devoted friends of public 
schools, and has given a vast amount of time and labor 

1 See Letter of Stephen Roper, Engineer, p. 106. 
4 



50 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

to their management and improvement, — and that, too, 
in years when they had comparatively few friends. He 
was the first to urge on pubHc attention the introduction 
of water ; and the great advantages in this respect, now 
possessed by the people of Providence, are to be ascribed 
to him more than to any other single man. A great 
and beneficent work like this was not to be accomplished 
without continual struggle and many disappointments, 
that succeeded each other for twenty years before it was 
finally undertaken by the city government. He had 
been a trustee of Brown University since 1826, a period 
of fifty-six years, and he received from the University 
the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws in 1851. He 
was one of the leading founders of the Providence 
Athenaeum, and has often served on its Board of Di- 
rectors. On the founding of the Butler 'Hospital for 
the Insane, in 1845, he was one of the original trus- 
tees and a member of its building-committee. He 
was also intimately associated with the important 
movement which led to the establishment of the Free 
Public Library, of which he was a trustee from its be- 
ginning. He was one of the original corporators of the 
Rhode Island Historical Society, for many years its 
senior Vice-President, and since 1880 its President. To 
no other person is that society so much indebted for its 
maintenance and prosperity. Even at his advanced 
period of life, he has performed for it, as President, a 
vast amount of useful work, and imparted to all its 
members additional interest and activity in its affairs. 

Mr. Allen became a member of the Rhode Island 
Society for the Encouragement of Domestic Industry, 



NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 51 

in 1824, and had outlived all of his associates of that 
period. He always manifested an interest in the objects 
and work of the society, and within the last year has 
been an active participant in its regular and occasional 
meetings. 

Far enough from complete is this brief enumeration 
of the varied services which Mr. Allen has performed 
for the generations among whom he has lived. Those 
which we have named, however, will illustrate the ver- 
satility and resources of his intellect, and the self- 
sacrificing public spirit and extraordinary personal 
activity which marked his life. His manners were 
genial and kindly, and he was always ready to impart 
information to those in every condition who came to 
ask it. He ;vas exceedingly fond of society ; and at his 
own home, which, until less than ten years ago, had 
been visited by no domestic bereavement, he delighted 
to dispense a generous and elegant hospitality. He 
was unusually fond of children. Their visits to him 
were always welcome even in his busiest hours, and he 
was never happier than when, in his later years, he 
gathered at his family board the three generations of 
his descendants. He had long been a member of St. 
John's Episcopal Church, with which his ancestors had 
always been connected, and of which his great-grand- 
father, the Huguenot, Gabriel Bernon, had been the 
principal founder. To its worship and to all its inter- 
ests he was devotedly attached. Though his frame 
was slight, his constitution was remarkably strong. His 
vigor, whether of body or mind, was but slightly im- 
paired by age, and he walked the streets and ascended 



52 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

the hills of Providence with a speed and elasticity which 
was hardly equalled by those who were twenty years 
his junior. He had scarcely been seriously ill in his 
life, and his quiet and painless death was doubtless that 
which he would have chosen, in preference to every 
other, as the termination of his career on earth. — Provi- 
dence Journal, March 20, 1882. 



FUNERAL OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

The funeral services of the late Zachariah Allen 
were observed at St. John's Church, on North Main 
Street, at 12 o'clock this noon. The seats in the audi- 
torium of the church were filled with the representative 
men of the city and State, who had assembled to show 
their respect for the man whom they honored in the 
fulness and strength of life. There were also present 
delegations from the Historical, Franklin, and Veteran 
firemen's societies, the Engineers' Association, and the 
vestry of St. John's Church, of which he was a member. 

The services, which were those of the Episcopal 
Church, were read by Bishop Clark and the Rev. C. A. 
L. Richards, no eulogy being pronounced. The re- 
mains were in a plain black casket, on which rested a 
wreath of violets, a sheaf of ripened wheat, and a cross 
composed of dark-green laurel leaves. The choir sang 
the chant, " Lord, let me know mine end," and the 
hymns, " Forever with the Lord," and " Jesus Lives." 
The remains were conveyed to the North Burial-ground, 
where they were interred. About fifty private carriages 



NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 53 

were observed about the church and in the long funeral 
cortege. Bishop Clark and the Rev. Mr. Richards, each, 
wore emblems of mourning, consisting of white scarfs 
drawn over the right shoulder and knotted at the left 
hip. Attached to each of the scarfs, at the shoulder, 
was a large black xo?.q.\X.q.— Provideiicc Press, March 21, 
1882. 

Rhode Island has lost one of its foremost citizens 
in the death of Zachariah Allen, who closed a long 
life of usefulness last week, at the age of eighty-six 
years and a half. Mr. Allen was graduated at Brown 
in 1 81 3, and was the last survivor of his class. Among 
his classmates were the Rev. Dr. Joel Hawes and the 
Rev. Dr. Enoch Pond. Mr. Allen, though educated 
a lawyer, went early into manufacturing, and did much 
to make Rhode Island prominent in that industry, — 
giving special attention to the development of water- 
power and the improvement of the steam-engine and 
of machinery. He himself invented the automatic cut- 
off valve for steam-engines, and the extension-rollers 
still used in mills. He also invented an improved fire- 
engine, and contrived a hot-air furnace for houses. His 
treatises on both scientific and historic subjects have 
been numerous and of high merit. He was probate 
judge and member of the Assembly; was first to urge, 
and did more than any other one man to secure, for 
Providence its water-supply system ; was among the 
earliest advocates of public schools ; was trustee of 
Brown University for fifty-six years ; one of the found- 
ers of the Athenaeum, of the Butler Hospital, of the 



54 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

Free Library, and of the Historical Society, and was 
president of the last named. The Providence Journal 
says of him, in an able review of his life, that " no man 
now among the living has been so closely identified 
with the interests of Providence, and so intimately as- 
sociated with the origin and early management of nearly 
all our most important institutions." Mr. Allen was the 
father-in-law of Mr. William D. Ely, a former resident 
of this city. — Hartford Coiirant, March 27, 1882. 



RECENT DEATH. 

The venerable Zachariah Allen, whose death at 
Providence, R. L, was announced on Saturday, was 
born in September, 1795, and his ancestral name is 
found in the earliest records of Plymouth Colony. The 
first calico-printing in New England was done by his 
father, who imported cotton from India. An ancestor 
on his mother's side, named Gabriel Bernon, was a 
Frenchman, who fled to Boston from La Rochelle in 
1688, after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes. He 
obtained a grant of 2,500 acres of land at Oxford, 
Mass., and planted a French colony there. In the 
records of the Massachusetts Historical Society (vol. ii. 
series 3) it is stated that Bernon came from France, and 
built a mill for manufactures at Oxford, and a fort for 
protection against the Indians. Mr. Zachariah Allen 
received his education at Medford, Mass., Exeter, N. H., 
and Brown University, Rhode Island. He was admitted 
to practice in the Rhode Island courts in 1815. 



NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 55 

In the " History of Arboriculture," published by Pro- 
fessor Charles S. Sargent of Harvard University, it is 
shown that Mr. Allen took the lead in New England, in 
the year 1819, in planting acorns, chestnuts, and locusts, 
for fuel and timber; and some of the trees of which 
he secured the planting were used in the Charlestown 
Navy Yard for building vessels during the War of the 
Rebellion. The improved fire-engines introduced into 
Boston by Mayor Quincy were made after a pattern 
approved by Mr. Allen. He was very successful in his 
efforts to improve machinery. He devoted a great deal 
of his time to scientific and mechanical pursuits until 
late in life. To the last he has devoted many hours 
a day to books and study. — Evening Tratiscript, Boston, 
March 20, 1882. 



A USEFUL LIFE. 

The death of Zachariah Allen, at Providence, R. I., 
is the best possible topic for an essay on a represent- 
ative Rhode-Islander. Mr. Allen might be called a true 
American, and a representative New-Englander, for he 
was all that, but it seems best to call him a typical 
Rhode-Islander; and if the whole story of his long life 
were written out, as it deserves, it would make a most 
wonderful tale. Mr. Allen was born September 15, 
1795, at Providence, and died March 17, 1882, complet- 
ing a life of almost eighty-seven years, — a life rarely or 
never clouded by physical illness, and devoted to what- 
soever his singularly fresh and fertile mind thought gen- 
erally useful or profitable. Unlike most men engaged 



56 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

in the affairs o^ peace, he was wholly unselfish, unless 
he may have desired some recognition of what he had 
done for others. Mr. Allen was born of a distin- 
guished family, the blood of Plymouth, Scotland, and 
the Huguenot Gabriel Bernon coursing through his 
veins. He was graduated at Brown University in the 
Class of 1813, and admitted to the bar in 1815. He 
was married in 18 17, and the happy union lasted until 

1873- 

His whole life was devoted to public affairs, such as 
public improvements, progress in manufacturing, and 
public economy. His father is believed to have been 
the first calico-printer in the United States, and this fact 
seems to have influenced the son through a singularly 
long, unclouded, and useful life. Mr. Allen caused the 
first scientific survey of Providence to be made, about 
sixty years ago. In 1822 he organized a system of ex- 
tinguishing fires, which was copied by Boston in Mayor 
Ouincy's time. Before that he had set a public exam- 
ple in tree-culture. In 1822 he built the first reservoir 
in the United States for the purpose of storing power to 
be used in manufacturing. 

When steam began to supplement water-power for 
manufacturing purposes, Mr. Allen improved the en- 
gines by inventing the automatic cut-off valves, which 
were patented in 1833, and are still employed by the 
best engineers. In 1821 he had constructed the first 
furnace for domestic heating purposes. He was the first 
to calculate the power of Niagara Falls, as appears in 
Silliman's Journal of April, 1844. It was he who estab- 
lished the principle of Mutual Insurance of mill property. 



NOTICES OF THE PRESS. 57 

Mr. Allen invented the tests and framed the laws for 
regulating the sale of explosive oils. 

He improved machines, he invented a better appara- 
tus for the transmission of power from the motor to the 
machine, he was the first to suggest evening schools for 
the working-people of New England, and he took an ac- 
tive part in the establishment of many public institutions. 
He published many essays and sketches, several volumes 
in pure or applied mechanics, and many reports. 

He took an active and prominent part in societies 
and associations of all kinds which had the public 
good as an object. He was one of the trustees of 
Brown University for more than half a century. At the 
time of his death he was President of the Rhode Island 
Historical Society ; and there is hardly a scientific, liter- 
ary, or benevolent association in the State, which he 
did not help to found, and to serve after its organiza- 
tion. In short he was ever ready to advance with his 
time, which seemed to his )^outhful mind too slow for 
the golden opportunities offered everywhere. 

Mr. Allen was a typical Rhode-Islander in his per- 
sonal independence. He never hesitated to ridicule the 
politicians, whom he thought the least useful of men. 
While very fond of society, and specially fitted for the 
pleasures of intellectual company or polished people, 
he remained throughout life a singularly simple man, 
cordial, frank, docile, ever ready to say what he knew, 
and never willing to tolerate injustice, ignorance, pre- 
judices, or shams. 

It was a common thing for Mr. Allen to describe, 
from personal recollection, how New England and 



58 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

Europe fared before the era of railroads, or to recount 
the conversations he had with prominent men sixty 
and seventy years ago. Up to the time of his death 
he attended society meetings or pubHc lectures with 
the zeal and zest of a beginner ; and a new discovery 
pleased him quite as much as did social progress and 
the advancement of honest independence. 

It would be difficult to match this record. It is rare 
that any life is spared so long and is so well preserved ; 
for of senility there was hardly a trace in Mr. Allen, 
who always delighted in the society of polished and 
vivacious young people. His cheerfulness, gayety, and 
enthusiasm never failed him. 

Up to the hour of his death he was as active, keen, 
and full of interest in everything and everybody about 
him, as a young man just starting in life. He worked 
to the last; and upon the desk at which he died, 
calmly and without pain, lay a half-written page upon 
the history of the early settlers of Rhode Island, for 
the benefit of whose descendants he had so long and 
so faithfully labored. — Boston Daily Advertiser, March 
20, 1882. 



ACTION OF THE RHODE ISLAND 
HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 



A T a special meeting of the Rhode Island Historical Society, 

held on Tuesday evening, March 21, 1882, to take action 

on the death of its honored President, Professor William Gam- 

MELL, the Senior Vice-President, called the meeting to order, 

and spoke as follows : — 

ADDRESS OF PROFESSOR GAMMELL. 

Gentlemen of the Society, — We meet this even- 
ing to render the tribute of grateful respect and honor 
which is due to the memory of our venerable President, 
the late Hon. Zachariah Allen, whose funeral we have 
to-day attended. His life had been extended far be- 
yond the ordinary period fixed for men to live on earth. 
To the oldest of us who are here present he seemed to 
belong to a generation in advance of our own. Very 
few of us were born when he was already entering upon 
active life. We seldom meet, in the crowds of busy men, 
one who has lived so long as he. His life began in the 
middle of the last decade of the eighteenth century, 
and it has been prolonged into the last decade but one 



6o MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

of the nineteenth. It is, in many respects, the most 
remarkable Hfe that has been hved among us since any 
of us have been on the stage of existence. Even from 
an early period it was crowded with activities and enter- 
prises of public importance, and with studies and labors 
that were designed for the good of others, and it would 
now be difficult to name any considerable undertaking, 
connected with our social or industrial interests, in which 
he has not borne a prominent part. Of a young man 
beginning life with such surroundings as he had, much 
was naturally expected, and all that could have been 
expected has been amply fulfilled in his long career 
in the city of his birth and his residence. 

Educated at the University, where he graduated at 
the age of eighteen, he pursued the study of both law 
and medicine, but in a few years abandoned them both, 
and engaged in that manufacturing business which has 
long engrossed so many of the most gifted men in 
Rhode Island ; and with this he was connected to the 
end of his life. I think, however, that the strongest 
bent of his mind was, after all, rather in the direction 
of scientific investigation and mechanical invention than 
of active business pursuits. The latter he entered upon 
from choice or necessity, but to the former he always 
gave himself as by a natural and irrepressible impulse. 
The investigations of science were, in their beginnings, 
it may be, tributary to his daily occupations ; but, 
wholly irrespective of this, he continued to pursue 
them, to inform himself about them, and to take delight 
in them, above all other subjects of interest, to the end 
of his life. The elaborate works which he wrote in 



RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 6 1 

connection with science, and the inventions which he 
made in the mechanic arts, have been of great value and 
are still highly esteemed. 

But more remarkable than any of these are the ser- 
vices which he has rendered as a citizen to the com- 
munity in which he has always lived. He has been the 
originator and the active promoter of nearly every con- 
siderable public improvement which has been accom- 
plished here in his time. He made the first accurate 
survey of the town streets ; he introduced hydraulic 
engines in the Fire Department, and devised reservoirs 
for storing surplus water for times of drought in the 
mill-streams ; he made improvements in the steam- 
engine and in the machinery for finishing cloth ; he 
devised the system of Mutual Insurance among manu- 
facturers, and suggested new legislation to regulate the 
sale of explosive oils. He early associated himself with 
the Franklin Society for Promoting the Study of Sci- 
ence, with the Association of Mechanics and Manu- 
facturers, and with the Rhode Island Society for the 
Encouragement of Domestic Industry. In all these 
he has at all times held leading positions. He was 
always an active promoter of free schools, and was the 
first to propose evening schools for the working-classes. 
He assisted in the founding of the Providence Athe- 
naeum, of the Butler Hospital, and the Free Public 
Library, and he has been a Trustee of the University 
for fifty-six years. 

I am not able here to present a full list of Mr. Allen's 
services to the public ; but there is one to which I wish 
particularly to refer, both because it is one of the most 



62 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

creditable of his whole life, and also because it strik- 
ingly illustrates the energy, the perseverance, and the 
public spirit that belonged ta his character, — and this 
is his long and finally triumphant struggle to introduce 
water into this city. I well remember that I met him 
in Italy in 185 i, I think after the plan had been pro- 
posed and had been pronounced impracticable. He 
remarked to me that since he had seen the ruined 
arches of the old aqueducts stretching across the Cam- 
pagna at Rome, which once supplied the city with 
water, he had been inspired with new courage. " If," 
said he, " the Romans could obtain pure water by such 
works as those, two thousand years ago, it is idle to say 
that our plan is impracticable. I shall never give it 
up." And he never did. The question was repeatedly 
submitted to the voters and decided in the negative ; 
but the majority constantly diminished, and at last it 
faded away, and the work was undertaken. We all 
remember the grand consummation; but we do not 
remember, perhaps we never knew, how much effort 
and determination and ceaseless labor were required 
to bring it about. Among those who accomplished it 
Mr. Allen deserves the first place ; and, if I remember 
aright, his Honor, the Mayor of the city, on the occa- 
sion of their first opening, pronounced him the " Father 
of the Water-works of Providence." 

But I must especially speak of Mr. Allen in his con- 
nection with this Historical Society. Very soon after 
its formation, in 1822, he became one of its members; 
and his first conspicuous service was to procure for it, 
while in England, a copy, made at his own expense, of 



RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 63 

Roger Williams's Key to the Indian Language, which 
he found in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, This was 
published in the first volume of our Collections. From 
that time to the day of his death he has been one of its 
most active members and most generous supporters. He 
w^as thoroughly imbued with the spirit of Rhode Island 
history. He believed that our founders and forefathers 
had been misunderstood and misrepresented by the 
historians of other States, and he was mortified that we 
had so long neglected to remove the false impressions 
which had been made. He especially desired that our 
own people should understand their State history, and 
he has done much to enable them to do so. No mem- 
ber of the Society now living has done nearly so much. 
Not less than seven important addresses — on subjects 
connected with our early history, and delivered before 
this Society — have been separately printed ; and quite 
as many more, delivered here and elsewhere, remain in 
manuscript. 

In 1870 he was chosen Vice-President, and for several 
years in this capacity presided at our meetings; and in 
1880 he succeeded the late Hon. Samuel G. Arnold in 
the office of President. Though coming to this office at 
so late a period in life, he has filled it in a manner cred- 
itable to himself and to the Society. He seemed to 
us, his associates, to carry in his memory the leading 
events of American history almost as if he had been 
their contemporary. Indeed his life had spanned all 
but the first twelve years of the acknowledged lifetime 
of the Republic, and he had lived in the administration 
of each of its presidents. Though his hearing had 



64 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

become dull, his memory was unimpaired, and his char- 
acteristic zeal was still untiring. He gave to the Society 
a great deal of time, care, and labor. He has been a 
frequent visitor at its cabinet, has looked diligently after 
its interests, and has contributed his full share to all its 
public exercises. Of what other member have we ever 
received, in so brief a period, so much assistance in 
what, after all, most concerns the real life and work of 
our Society ! 

Old age brought to him but few of its customary bur- 
dens, but it was filled with the serene thoughts and 
hopes it is always fitted to suggest. He had long been 
accustomed, almost daily, to express to those dearest 
to him his thankfulness for the blessings of his closing 
years ; and he often repeated at evening the lines of the 
hymn which was sung at his funeral to-day : — 

" Yet nightly pitch my moving tent 
A day's march nearer home." 

At the close of his remarks, Professor Gammell presented 
for adoption and entry upon the Records the following 

MEMORIAL MINUTE. 

Zachariah Allen, LL.D., the President of this 
Society, died in Providence, March 17, 1882, at the age 
of eighty-six years and six months. 

He was born in Providence, September 15, 1795, and 
was descended from ancestors who were among the 
early settlers of the town. A graduate of Brown Uni- 
versity in the Class of 18 13, and admitted to the bar in 
1815, he long ago became the senior member of the 



RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 65 

legal profession in Rhode Island. In 1822 he engaged 
in business as a manufacturer, and in this he continued 
to the end of his life. His tastes, as well as his occu- 
pations, early led him to devote much attention to 
physical science, and especially to the principles of 
mechanics, and their appHcation to the industrial arts. 
These studies soon gave rise to far broader investiga- 
tions in Mechanical Philosophy; of which in later years 
he published the results, in volumes which have received 
high commendation. He has also been the author of 
inventions and improvements in machinery, which have 
secured for him a wide reputation among the votaries 
of science and of the mechanic arts. 

As a benefactor of the community in which he has 
always lived, Mr. Allen holds a conspicuous position 
among those who have sought to promote its highest 
interests, — for his zeal in maintaining and extending 
popular education and encouraging popular industry, 
for his public spirit in securing some of our most impor- 
tant public improvements, and for the labors he has per- 
formed in founding and sustaining several of our most 
cherished institutions of learning and benevolence. 

He became a member of this Society immediately 
after its organization in 1822, and obtained for it, while 
in England, the materials for the first volume of its pub- 
lications ; and he has at all times been one of its most 
active and useful members. He has assisted in gather- 
ing its materials for local history, and in promoting all 
the objects for which it was founded. He has prepared 
numerous communications and addresses for its meet- 
ings, and has been one of its best supporters and friends. 

5 



66 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

In 1870 he was chosen its Senior Vice-President, and in 
this capacity, for considerable periods, he frequently 
presided at its meetings, and had charge of its affairs. 
In 1880, on the death of the late Hon. Samuel G. 
Arnold, he was chosen its President. The fidelity and 
care with which he has discharged the duties of this 
office, the time which he has given to the Society, 
and the labor which, at the age of more than fourscore 
years, he has performed in its behalf, have not been 
equalled for the same period by those of any of his 
official predecessors ; and they have commanded the 
grateful admiration of all his associates, who now place 
upon their records this brief expression of the apprecia- 
tion and respect in which they hold the character and 
services of their late venerable President. 



ADDRESS OF EX-GOVERNOR WILLIAM W. HOPPIN. 

It is impossible to do justice to the life and services 
of Mr. Allen, in the few moments allotted to me on this 
occasion ; that duty must be reserved for his future 
biographer. On the morning when the death of our 
honored President had become known, I chanced to be 
standing near two citizens who were engaged in earnest 
conversation. Turning to me, one of them said: "This 
whole country is made poorer to-day by the death of 
Mr. Zachariah Allen," — an acceptable eulogium on one 
whose knowledge and experience, gained by a long life 
of study and active work, was distributed with a free 
and generous purpose for the common good of all. 



RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 67 

Passing over the period of his boyhood and college 
days, we find Mr. Allen, at the age of twenty, a student 
of law in the office of Mr. James Burrill, of whom it may 
be said that he ranked first among the distinguished 
men of Rhode Island. How far the example of James 
Burrill influenced and shaped the character of Mr. 
Allen we cannot tell. That he was like Mr. Burrill in 
the exactness of his knowledge, and wonderful power 
of retaining facts, cannot be doubted. 

Perhaps no other man in the State surpassed Mr. 
Allen in the marked ease w^ith which he held all his 
intellectual wealth at his instant command. His name 
calls up and associates itself pleasantly in my mind with 
the names of James Burrill, Thomas A. Jenckes, and 
Judge Ames, — a galaxy of great minds which Rhode 
Island has given to the country. 

The conversational powers of Mr. Allen were excep- 
tionally fine ; he delighted in the opportunity of impart- 
ing knowledge, and freely drew upon the exhaustless 
stores of his almost universal information for the benefit 
of those who wished instruction or advice. 

On Mr. Allen's return from Europe in 1826, while 
still a young man, he published his first book, entitled 
" The Science of Mechanics as applied to the Useful 
Arts in Europe and America; " and since that time he 
has given us, at various intervals, other works on lit- 
erary and scientific subjects, — all useful and practical 
books, which retain their value to this day. 

I need scarcely refer to the interest he took in mat- 
ters relating to the welfare of the city, — the schools, 
the Fire Department, the Athenaeum, the Free Library, 



68 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

and everything in fact that could add to the prosperity 
and attractiveness of Providence. As a member of the 
city government, as President of the Mechanics' Associ- 
ation and of the Franklin Society, he fulfilled the duties 
of his office with such conscientiousness and thorough- 
ness that the community owe to him more than can be 
measured. 

The great work of his life, entitled " The Philosophy 
of the Mechanics of Nature, and of the Source and 
Modes of Transmission of Natural Motive-power," which 
he began in 1851, has been only recently completed, in 
his last volume entitled " Solar Light and Heat." 

Thus, his long and useful public life, upon which he 
entered at the age of twenty-seven, continued uninter- 
rupted for sixty years, — a rare and wonderful record, 
which few men can show. 

When we consider Mr. Allen's individuality of char- 
acter, his rare natural force of mental power, his unusual 
opportunities for development, his genial disposition and 
great facility for imparting knowledge, and the fact that 
sixty years of active public life, with unimpaired intel- 
lect, had perfected his judgment, we must feel that in 
his death this community has sustained a loss that is 
indeed irreparable. 



REMARKS OF THE RT. REV. THOMAS M. CLARK, D.D. 

I FEEL, Mr. President, that to-night we are a bereaved 
household. Two weeks ago this evening our venerable 
President occupied this chair, and spoke to us with 
his usual vigor and clearness ; and at the close of the 



RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 69 

meeting I had the privilege of accompanying him home, 
and ail the way he was as full of genial, pleasant talk 
as ever. How little did it occur to any of us that that, 
was the last time we should meet here ; how little we 
thought that we should come here this evening to 
mingle our sympathies and condolences over such a 
loss as this. Somehow we came to attach an idea of 
permanence to Mr. Zachariah Allen. It seemed almost 
impossible that he should ever be taken away. I never 
knew so old a man who was so young a man as he. 
When he died his eye was not dimmed nor his natural 
force abated. In his old age he had none of the tedi- 
ousness or obscurity which so often falls to the lot of 
old men. There was hardly any subject that ever came 
up, here or anywhere else where he happened to be, 
of which he could not say something that was fresh and 
new. One of the chief features of the man was that he 
always seemed to be able to relate something out of his 
experience, bearing on the subject under discussion, 
thereby throwing life and light into it. 

We shall miss him very much. It has been well said 
that there is no man in this community that has done 
as much for the city and State as he. There is no man 
that is dead who has left so many marks behind him 
to show that he existed. If we should be asked what 
monument there is to him, we should reply that his 
monument is to be seen here, there, and everywhere. 
There has been no work of special importance in the 
city during the past half-century in which he was not 
prominent. There is another feature of his character, 
to which allusion has not been made ; I refer to the 



70 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

singular absence in him of anything Hke personal ambi- 
tion. He never seemed to care anything about himself. 
I never heard of his electioneering to be made Mayor 
or Governor or Senator. He became President of this 
Society at a very advanced period of his life. He 
waited till he was eighty-four years of age, and then 
he accepted it with becoming modesty and personal 
gratification. If even then he had never been elected 
to this position, his interest in the Society would have 
been as great as ever. You can generally judge from 
a man's conversation whether or not he cares very much 
about himself. Although he was a great talker, and 
very often had a great many personal reminiscences 
to give us, there was no undercurrent in his remarks 
signifying that he had any personal purpose to serve 
whatever. There are very few men who leave such 
a mark on the history of their time as Mr. Allen has 
done. There are many who have inherited all the 
advantages that he inherited, and yet they live, die, and 
are buried, and then forgotten, and there is nothing to 
show that they have lived. They roll along on the 
surface till they are swallowed up in the great ocean. 
Mr. Allen will be remembered in this city as long as 
men live to drink pure water that comes from the 
streams in the country, and as long as those institutions 
exist which he did so much to establish. 

As to the literary and scientific works of Mr. Allen, 
there is a great deal to be said. If he had never done 
anything but write books, he would perhaps have been 
more talked about than he really was. We forget the 
author in the actor. It is more magnificent to act than 



RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 71 

to write. If he had never done anything but talk and 
write, he would have been eminent. In 1827 he pub- 
lished a book of travels that was full of interest and 
information, containing a great deal more than many 
of our books of travel to-day. Then his work on Solar 
Light and Heat suggests the thought that he was en- 
dowed with a somewhat prophetic vision. He antici- 
pated, in this last-named work, a great many of what are 
considered more modern discoveries. He seemed to 
come by intuition, without knowing it himself, on facts 
which other men have arrived at by logic and study. 
The range of the man's mind was very great. He could 
write a good book on travels or science, or a historical 
paper. He was a kind of encyclopaedia. He had, too, 
a great sympathy for young people. Boys who were 
just struggling to get at the first rudiments of science 
would find him ever ready to help them. He seemed 
to keep up the freshness of his own life by his sym- 
pathy with the young ones. There is no danger of 
exaggerating his strong and good points. 

He was, too, a reverential man. He was not above 
going to church, as some men eminent in science are 
at the present day. He believed in God and another 
world, and that there is a spiritual side to all those 
things in which he and others were interested. He 
looked on this world as the symbol of another. He 
believed in " God the Father, maker of heaven and 
earth." It will be a long time before we fill his 
place in this Historical Society, and before we shall 
find a man willing to do as much as he has done. I 
only hope that in transacting great matters of public 



72 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

importance the mantle of Mr. Allen may fall on some 
one who will know how to wear it. 

At the close of Bishop Clark's address, Professor 
Gammell, recalling his reference to Mr. Allen's interest 
in the young, said that when Mr. Allen's grandson was 
a child, he and his companions used to gather around 
him almost every day, and Mr. Allen gave them their 
first inspiration in scientific inquiry. The result was 
that those boys formed a Society, the object of which 
was to get information upon various subjects, and which 
exists to-day. 



LETTER OF THE REV. E. M. STONE, 

Late Librarian of the Society. 

PROvmENCE, March 21, 1882. 
Hon. Amos Perry, Secretary, &c. 

Dear Sir, — Your notice that a meeting of the 
Rhode Island Historical Society will be held this even- 
ing, to take appropriate action on the lamented death 
of its venerable President, the Hon. Zachariah Allen, 
has been received. I regret that I cannot be present 
on the occasion, and beg permission to offer, in this 
form, a brief but heartfelt tribute to the memory of a 
valued personal friend, with whom for many years I 
held pleasant official relations. 

Few men surpassed Mr. Allen in varied attainments. 
He was at home alike in history, literature, science, and 
art. Up to the day of his death his love of research 



RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. -] ^y 

was as fresh, and his zeal in prosecuting it as active, as 
when, in early years, he studied in its details the history 
of Rhode Island. 

Of local history, the mind of Mr. Allen was a com- 
plete encyclopaedia. The part he took in town, muni- 
cipal, and State affairs, and his knowledge of the origin 
and progress of the many institutions which adorn our 
city, qualified him to answer authoritatively the inqui- 
ries of antiquaries, as few, if any, persons now living can. 

But he has gone, and I mourn in his departure a 
friend whose sunny face in the street and cordial wel- 
come in his home will ever be cherished among my 
choicest memories. It was my privilege to meet him 
at his house a few days before his decease, and the 
recollection of that interview is of the most pleasurable 
character. Happy for us if, in all that diffuses knowl- 
edge and promotes human happiness, our activities 
accord with the active life of our late honored Presi- 
dent. Thrice happy for us if, when our mortal puts 
on immortality, our house shall be found set in order. 
Very respectfully yours, 

EDWIN M. STONE. 



REMARKS OF MR. AMOS PERRY. 

Forty-five years ago a member of the Senior Class 
of Harvard College came a stranger to Rhode Island, 
and, while wending his way on foot from Providence 
to a neighboring village, was saluted by a gentleman 
driving that way in an open carriage : " Good-morning, 



74 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

sir; will you take a seat with me? Riding is easier 
than walking." The invitation was accepted, and a 
conversation ensued on our ordinary college curriculum, 
and the course of study best calculated to answer the 
ends of life. The gentleman freely expressed his views 
in regard to a liberal education. Without disparaging 
the classics, he thought our youth should be taught to 
love and admire the works of creation amid which they 
dwell. He expressed the highest appreciation of the 
Book of Nature, apparently estimating the worth of the 
studies pursued according to the aid they afford in 
understanding and interpreting the great volume that 
is ever open to all. He thought the natural sciences 
had never been assigned their proper place in our 
courses of instruction. Elevate them, and they will 
elevate society, was his idea. This casual interview be- 
gan an acquaintance which ended only with the death 
of Mr. Allen. Fifteen years after this conversation, 
salutations were exchanged on the shore of Lake Le- 
man in the presence of sublime Alpine scenery. Mr. 
Allen was prepared to appreciate and enjoy the works 
of nature and of art in the Old World as in the New. 
He was the same man at home and abroad. God's uni- 
verse was his temple. The act of courtesy and the con- 
versation referred to were in keeping with his life. His 
charm, his glory, was his elevated spirit and kind re- 
gard for those around him. Beyond and above his 
extensive and varied scientific and literary attainments, 
was the man who delighted to gratify and benefit all 
who came within the sphere of his influence. He 
lifted up his fellow-travellers with pleasing fancies, and 



RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 75 

then led them to the contemplation of great truths. He 
was a Christian gentleman, beloved and revered by the 
members of this Society, and by all who had the privi- 
lege of his acquaintance. 



REMARKS OF CHARLES E. CARPENTER. ESQ. 

Although my remarks will not be directly in the line 
of what has been so eloquently said by those who have 
preceded me, I find it difficult to refrain from offering a 
small tribute to the memory of Mr. Allen, in his con- 
nection with an organization recently formed, — the 
Providence Veteran Firemen's Association, — of which 
he was most properly elected the first President. Think- 
ing of him in the many honorable and useful positions 
he both filled and adorned, I am surprised that at his 
great age, and with his refined tastes, he should have 
entered into this sort of association with such alacrity 
and heartiness, — attending nearly every meeting, and 
contributing liberally of money, and of facts appertain- 
ing to the early history of the department of suction- 
engines in Providence. I cannot forget how he entered 
our quarterly meeting of Veterans during the heavy 
snow-storm of January 31st, his elastic step and glowing 
face calling forth applause from the few much younger 
men who had felt it quite enough for them to brave the 
elements at that time. 

But the fact is, our friend was not simply a scholar ; 
he was a practical man of the people, and loved to 
apply in popular ways his ready knowledge to promote 



76 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

the interests of old and young in his native Providence, 
which he had seen rise from a town of moderate size to 
an important city. 



REMARKS OF JAMES N. ARNOLD. 

Mr. James N. Arnold, of North Kingstown, said he 
wished to speak for the Narragansett country. After 
referring to the honor in which the late Mr. Allen was 
held, the speaker referred to his simplicity of character 
and his charitable disposition. His hours of leisure 
were spent in studying, deeply and thoroughly, the his- 
tory of his beloved State. Than he, Rhode Island had 
few worthier sons, and certainly none that loved her 
more. None went further than he in studying the at- 
tacks of her enemies, and none hastened sooner with his 
pen to her rescue. He saw in the " Great Narragansett 
Question " the key-note and the origin of nearly, if not 
all, the calumny that has been written, in passion, against 
his own gallant State ; and to read the letters he wrote, 
urging a brother-historian to vindicate the honor of our 
State, was as refreshing as a benediction. These letters 
breathe through them the freshness and the vigor of 
youth, united with the calm and considerate judgment 
of the historian. Rhode Island and her record, as writ- 
ten in her annals, to him was a subject ever new. Amid 
these scenes he never was tired of wandering, nor did 
he weary of urging them upon the attention of his 
fellow-men. His published writings are ample proof of 
this statement. He loved the whole of Rhode Island. 
The most inland or humblest town was as near and as 



RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. ']'] 

dear to him as the most wealthy and opulent. The fact 
that it made a part of Rhode Island was enough to 
enlist his veneration, respect, and love. 



REMARKS OF J. ERASTUS LESTER, ESQ. 

I HAVE come a long way from my home, on the 
great hill at the west, to this eastern eminence of the 
old town, to pay my humble yet heartfelt tribute to the 
memory of my venerated and steadfast friend. The 
great disparity in our ages may furnish a reason for sur- 
prise that there should exist a friendship between us, in 
place of mere admiration on my part for the learning 
and practical wisdom of Mr. Allen. In the community 
of study and investigation, age and youth stand on equal 
ground in the pursuit of truth. 

My first acquaintance with Mr. Allen was made 
while I was a student in yonder college halls ; and from 
that day to the day of his death I counted him one to 
whom I might always turn for aid and suggestions in 
the prosecution of my studies. Indeed, in whatever I 
was interested, the intimation thereof to Mr. Allen 
always called forth from his fact-crowded mind the 
surest hints to further and fresher fields of research. 
To me his intercourse with young men, so full of sym- 
pathy, so courteous and considerate, forms one of his 
chiefest virtues. Too often men who have reached his 
age and distinction withdraw themselves in haughty 
reserve from communication with the young men, strug- 
gling on to take the places and assume the duties of 



78 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

those who pass on into the shadowy land. To him it 
was ahvays duty, enUvened by zest in the pursuit of 
all knowledge, to give those younger than himself all 
the help and encouragement in his power ; and those to 
whom he has been a stanch friend and benefactor in 
this wise are no meagre company. 

Mr. Allen's life was not one to pique the curiosity. 
He lived for his fellows, for the municipality, for the 
State. It was open and unostentatious. The town, in 
which he was born and always lived, owes him much, 
and to preserve his memory should be one of her sacred 
trusts. The State, whose authority he respected, has 
been honored by his citizenship, and her name made 
more illustrious by his labors. Our Society, in which he 
took such an intelligent interest, honors itself whenever 
it shall recall his memory or tell of what he wrought. 
When we say there is no one to take his place, do we 
say more than that a great man has fallen? The life 
and example of such men help others to be prepared to 
take the places made vacant. In the advancing steps 
of civilization we are warranted in saying, that there are 
more young men of to-day fitted to take his place, than 
there were, at the outset of his long and laborious life, 
to take the place assumed by him ; and in saying this, 
there is no disparagement to our friend, for he, by his 
many and varied services, has done more than any 
other man in this community to educate and fit young 
men for such places. He was a masterful man. 

The world's great procession presses onward, though 
many fall out; and as in Addison's "Vision of Mirza," 
the throng appears just as dense, and those who fall 



RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 79 

through the bridge are not missed. Even great and 
famous men, falling in the midst of life's battle, stay not 
the onward march, and those who pass from sight in 
the fulness of years are not mourned by the great 
world ; but it is reserved to a narrow circle of friends 
and neighbors to gather up and cherish the sweet re- 
membrances of a lifetime. If that Eastern philosophy 
be true, which tells us that 

" Death 
is that first breath, 

Which our souls draw when we enter 

Life," 

then this passing on is but fruition ; and in the case of 
our friend it became glorious. The tired and weary 
body laid itself to rest ; and what to our dull eyes appears 
the all of life, went out as calmly and quietly as fades 
the candle when the oil is burned. His life is not back 
of us ; it is before us, as a beacon-light to guide into 
safe havens. Can I do more than to recall the words 
of Longfellow when his friend Felton laid himself down 
to sleep? — 

" Thou hast but taken thy lamp and gone to bed ; 
I stay a little longer, as one stays 
To cover up the embers that still burn." 



8o MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 



REMARKS BY JUDGE STINESS. 

The Hon. John H. Stiness, being called upon to 
speak as a representative of the profession of the law, 
said, that the followers of every vocation naturally turn 
with feelings of pride and satisfaction to those of their 
fellows who have an honored name, and it had given 
him pleasure to know that Mr. Allen for many years 
had been the oldest member of the legal profession, and 
one of its noblest ornaments among the citizens of our 
State. It had been a pleasure to see a man so inter- 
ested in all the affairs of life, — so great a benefactor to 
those about him, both in public and private matters, — 
live to the age that he had reached, and yet retain appar- 
ently the full vigor of his prime of life. He had often 
regretted that Mr. Allen had not devoted himself to the 
active practice of the law ; for with his energy, philan- 
thropy, and powers of mind, he would certainly have 
made a brilliant mark, and have done substantial service 
for the welfare of the community. A man who com- 
poses strife, who harmonizes discords, who heals 
wounded feelings, who sees and shows the right, and 
aids in establishing justice, is no less a benefactor to his 
race, than one who discovers great forces, invents useful 
machines, conducts large business affairs, or does deeds 
of charity. As Mr. Allen had been the exemplary busi- 
ness-man and citizen, so he would have been the exem- 
plary lawyer, adding renown to a profession that has 
hitherto been worthily honored. No doubt his legal 
training and knowledge of the law had aided him greatly 



RHODE ISLAND HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 8 1 

in doing much of the good work that had distinguished 
his Hfe. His varied services had been fittingly set forth, 
and had been such as we would long remember; but 
the glory of his life had been that he was always willing 
and anxious to do what he could for the benefit of 
others. 

At the conclusion of Judge Stiness's remarks, the 
Memorial Minute presented by Professor Gammell was 
unanimously adopted by a standing vote, and the meet- 
ing was adjourned. 



The following letters, from two honored ofilicers of the His- 
torical Society, were received too late to be read till a subse- 
quent meeting. 

Newport, March 20, 1882. 

Dear Mr. Perry, — The intelligence of the death 
of Mr. Allen, the esteemed President of our Rhode 
Island Historical Society, was received by me with sin- 
cere sadness ; for we had been acquainted nearly half a 
century. As our residences were remote from each 
other, our intercourse was necessarily interrupted. 
Still it was frequent enough, especially during the years 
we were associated as officers of the Historical Society, 
to keep our mutual regard fresh and enduring. 

Mr. Allen was the senior member of the Rhode 
Island bar at the time of his death ; which sad event 
leaves me the unenviable distinction of being the oldest 
member thereof, — certainly the oldest lawyer still in 
practice. 

6 



82 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

I shall cordially concur in any tribute of respect for 

his life and character which the Society may decide to 

adopt. 

Very sincerely yours, 

FRANCIS BRINLEY. 

Newport, R. L, March 20, 1882. 
To Hon. Amos Perry, Secretary, &c. 

Dear Mr. Perry, — It is with the deepest pain and 
regret that I have heard of the death of my old and 
esteemed friend, Mr. Allen, to whom I was sincerely at- 
tached for his many amiable and noble qualities. His 
death is to me a painful surprise ; for, although he was 
an old man, he always seemed to me so vigorous, and 
his mind, on every subject that he touched upon, so 
clear and strong, that one forgot his advanced age when 
conversing with him. I can hardly realize that he has 
passed away, — that his place at the gatherings of the 
Historical Society has become vacant. 

It is not possible for me to attend the commemora- 
tive meeting to do honor to the memory of this good 
man ; but I cannot let the opportunity pass without 
saying to you, who knew him so much better than I, 
how deeply I deplore his loss. 

Ever truly yours, 

GEO. C. MASON. 



ACTION OF OTHER SOCIETIES, 

ETC. 



ACTION OF THE PROVIDENCE FRANKLIN 
SOCIETY. 

A T a meeting of this Society, held March 28, 1882, the Presi- 
dent, Levi W. Russell, Esq., spoke thus : — 

Fellow-members, — Two weeks ago this evening 
it was the privilege of this Society to listen to the words 
of one whose voice we shall hear no more on earth. 
It was the speech of one whom we more than honored, 
— whom we loved. Titles he had, but he was above and 
beyond them. He adorned them, rather than they 
him ; and that not so much from his great learning 
as from the use he made of his large acquirements. 

Zachariah Allen was one of the finest m^odels of the 
true type of New England manhood which the land 
of Roger Williams has produced. Had he been ambi- 
tious to place himself prominently before the world, 
he might have won high distinction in various lines 
of thought and action. As he lived, he drew from all 
sources around him, from the sun and other bodies in 
space, no less than from what he met about his home 



84 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

or on his travels, lessons of divine wisdom, prudence, 
and beneficence, which he only took for himself to-day, 
to give to others to-morrow. 

He was a full-rounded man ; and while we admired 
him for his copious knowledge (and that upon almost 
any topic coming up for discussion or conversation), and 
while we listened with rapt attention to his clear and 
fluent statements and explanations upon the subjects 
of his remarks, we were always cheered and made bet- 
ter by what he said. His enthusiasm in matters which 
particularly interested us, as gleaners in the fields of 
science and natural history, was something inspiring. 
He spoke to us as though conscious of his power, yet 
no one could care less than he to put himself in front. 
He was not a lecturer, but he possessed the rare faculty 
of speaking to an audience as though talking to each 
individually. How often have we uttered or heard 
this remark: "Mr. Allen is always interesting;" or 
this : " Mr. Allen has always something good to say 
to us." 

We shall miss him in this Society. We shall miss 
his cordial greetings, his genial face,, his noble exam- 
ple, and his instructive words. I can hardly think of 
him as an old man. Until the hour of his passing on, 
he carried the best of youth about with him ; so we 
did not think of his leaving us, even at half a genera- 
tion beyond the appointed bound of human life. 

Some of us, who thought that the walks of our Soci- 
ety excursions were at times long and tiresome, said 
but little about it, as we saw Mr. Allen, at more than 
fourscore years, tripping along like a boy in his teens. 



PROVIDENCE FRANKLIN SOCIETY. 85 

and at the same time talking like a philosopher, as he 
was, of what he saw around him. 

He made the best of himself as long as he lived, 
and no doubt he lived the longer for his doing so. 
What a noble example to those who, in advanced 
years, feel that there is nothing more for them to do ! 
To outlive his usefulness was no part of his allotted 
stay on earth. For years he has known that he might 
be "but for a day; " but that day should see some- 
thing accomplished, something done. 

When the life of Zachariah Allen shall be adequately 
written, it will be one of the most helpful biographical 
books which this State has ever given to the public. 
It will teach young men how to begin life, middle-aged 
men the way to improve it, and old men how to make 
it useful and happy. 

It is not my purpose to speak of the various ways in 
which Mr. Allen benefited the public during his long 
life. It is enough to call to mind what his compeers 
say of him, — that he was the pioneer in most of the 
great improvements of his home city for a half-century 
back. I W'ill leave it to others, who knew him longer 
than I have done, to review his work in originating, 
carrying on, and inspiring others to give their thought 
and time to the purposes of the Franklin Society. 

From my first acquaintance with him, ten or eleven 
years ago, he has impressed me as a model of right 
living; and now that he has passed on, as we trust, to 
wider fields of usefulness, we are still permitted to profit 
by his example, as we must by the beneficent results 
of his good works. We are fortunate in possessing 



86 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

a fine cast of the features of Mr. Allen, for our Society- 
rooms. As we look upon the benignant face, may it 
ever incite us to emulate his good works. 

At the close of his remarks Dr. W. O. Brown moved that a 
committee of three be appointed to report to the Society appro- 
priate resolutions and memorials concerning our loved brother 
and friend, Zachariah Allen, suggesting that Rev. E. M. Stone 
be the chairman of that committee. Rev. Mr. Stone, John A, 
Rowland, and Mr. Southwick were appointed on that com- 
mittee. Dr. Brown, in connection with his motion, spoke 
briefly of the high qualities of the deceased, and of his large 
and abiding interest in the Society, and of the great loss which 
we had sustained. The committee, after retiring for a short 
time, reported through its chairman as follows: — 

Resolved, That in the sudden death of the Hon. 
Zachariah Allen we are impressively reminded of the 
uncertainty of life, and are called upon to mourn the 
departure of our oldest surviving associate, whose 
cheerful face and words of wisdom were as sunshine and 
instruction in the councils of this Society. 

Resolved, That this Society here desires to give ex- 
pression to its appreciation of the varied and profound 
learning of its late associate-member, and of the gener- 
ous use he made of his vast accumulation of knowledge, 
for the benefit of the age in which he lived. 

Resolved, That this Society places itself in harmony 
with the entire community in the expression of respect 
for the active life and useful services of one who for 
threescore years has been identified with institutions 
and measures that have contributed largely to the 
prosperity of his native town and of the State. 



PROVIDENCE FRANKLIN SOCIETY. 87 

Resolved, That we tender to the family of our de- 
parted associate our sincere sympathy in this hour of 
their deep sorrow. 

Resolved, That the Secretary of this Society is hereby 
directed to transmit to the family of the deceased a 
copy of these resolutions, and also to enter the same 
upon the Society's records. 

Resolved, That as a further token of respect to the 
memory of Mr. Allen, this Society do now adjourn. 

Mr. Stone, after presenting the resolutions, spoke in 
a very feeling and appreciative manner of Mr. Allen. 
He alluded to his delivering a lecture before the Society 
as early as 1830, upon his first return from Europe; to 
his frequent contributions in the way of papers, his 
readiness at all times to enlighten his audiences upon 
the most varied topics, and often with no opportunity 
for special preparation. He spoke of his intimate rela- 
tion with him for many years, and of the great assist- 
ance he had rendered him in his historical researches. 
He regarded him as the " residuary legatee " of the 
umvritten history of the State for one hundred and 
fifty years back. He said that his inmost and per- 
sonal feelings towards the deceased were of too intimate 
a nature to be expressed except to the family. 

Samuel Austin addressed the Society in fitting 
words. He said : " Brothers of the Franklin Society, we 
meet as a bereaved family. If at our last pleasant meet- 
ing, only a fortnight since, we had been asked, ' Know 
ye that the Lord will take away your master from your 



. . 'f'JEsri£;',<»&iuA£bs>^w_ 



88 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

head to-day?' how prompt had been the answer, and 
how natural, ' Hold ye your peace ! ' So accustomed 
have we been to his regular attendance here, to his 
genial participation in all our pursuits, so long have we 
sat under his teachings, always so interested in the 
man, the subject, the manner, — whatever the occasion; 
— that we find ourselves quite unprepared to admit the 
sober reality. 

" The departure of the venerable Zachariah Allen, 
from this earthly scene of labors so abundant and so 
beneficent, is an event of marked interest. The com- 
munity deeply feels it. The several corporations with 
which he was connected — religious, civil, benevolent, 
scientific — deem it their privilege, each in its turn, 
to testify their appreciation of such a life. Among 
these associations none more deeply feels its loss 
than the Providence Franklin Society. We deem it 
a privilege, then, to join in this spontaneous public 
expression." 

Mr. Austin then touched points of general interest : 
Mr. Allen's early and abiding love for science ; his 
regard for nature's God, which was profound and rev- 
erent ; his spirit of helpfulness to others ; his ardent 
pursuit of knowledge everywhere ; his serene confi- 
dence in the principles concerning God and nature's 
laws, which had satisfied Newton and Kepler, Bacon 
and Agassiz ; his instructions given to us in lectures, 
papers, and conversations ; the versatility of his powers ; 
the lessons to teachers, parents, and others, to multiply 
such examples as he showed ; his special educational 
work in establishing evening schools and libraries, as 



PROVIDENCE FRANKLIN SOCIETY. 89 

well as his long connection with the University. These, 
and other points in his life's work, were successively 
elaborated by Mr. Austin. He spoke particularly of 
Mr. Allen's efforts to establish a Public Library in 
Providence, which he planned to have combined with 
other educational factors, as an art-gallery and mu- 
seum, in one grand building, so that the whole would 
be complete. 

In closing, Mr. Austin said : " How vividly we recall 
our last interview on this spot with our venerated 
friend ! Gratefully accepting this faithful likeness that 
adorns our walls as a friendly monitor, let us strive, at 
whatever distance, to emulate the virtues of our friend 
and benefactor." 

Mr. D. VV. HOYT spoke briefly, remarking that he 
felt it an honor to belong to a Society of which Mr. 
Allen was so prominent a member. It was a delight 
to know him, a pleasure to remember him. He had 
been impressed with his extreme courtesy, great kind- 
ness, by his manner and his words. He spoke of his 
investigations in science, and surmised that there were 
foreshadowed in his last work, on Solar Light and Heat, 
theories and thoughts which, in years to come, may 
be accepted as great truths. He rejoiced that he had 
pubhshed that work. He rejoiced to have known him. 

Mr. Charles M. Salisbury followed with brief 
remarks, speaking of his last walk home with him 
from the meeting, two weeks ago. Dr. BROWN added 
appreciative words, and Mr. Clark spoke of him as 



90 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

being a man, a gentleman of the Old School, and 
as very cordial and kind to his employes when in 
active business. 

The resolutions were in solemn silence passed by a standing 
vote. 



PROVIDENCE ASSOCIATION OF MECHANICS 
AND MANUFACTURERS. 

At the annual meeting, held April 14, 1882, it was 

Resolved, That in the death of Zachariah Allen, its 
late President, this Association mourns the loss of one 
of its oldest, most esteemed, and honored members ; of 
one whose personal labors of investigation and research 
in the departments of mechanics and physical science, 
and whose earnest endeavors, through a long and busy 
life, for the promotion of manufactures and the me- 
chanic arts, and the diffusion of practical information 
and scientific knowledge, as well as his ready and untir- 
ing efforts in other ways for the advancement of human 
welfare, have received our sincere appreciation, and 
merit our lasting gratitude. 

In addition to the above, a sketch of the life of Mr. 
Allen, derived mainly from the article published in the 
Providence Journal, immediately after his death, has 
been entered upon the records of the Society. 

Attest : 

S. H. TINGLEY, Secretary. 



PROVIDENCE PUBLIC LIBRARY. 91 



PROVIDENCE PUBLIC LIBRARY. 

At a meeting of the Board of Trustees of the Providence 
Public Library, held June 13, 1882, the following minute was 
adopted : — 

MINUTE. 

Since the last meeting of this Board there have died, 
at their respective residences in this city, two of its 
members: the Hon. Zachariah Allen, on the 17th day of 
March ; and the Hon. William S. Slater, the President 
of the Board, on the 28th day of May. 

This Board, therefore, orders to be incorporated 
with its proceedings a record of its high estimate of the 
character, ability, and services to this library of its late 
associates, than whom it had no warmer friends. Mr. 
Allen was earnest in his watchfulness over its welfare, 
and constant in his endeavors to advance its interests ; 
and Mr. Slater, though prevented, by the large and 
varied business interests under his supervision, from giv- 
ing to it much of his personal attention, is remembered 
among the largest donors to its funds. 

F. E. RICHMOND, Secretary. 



The following resolutions, beautifully engrossed and framed, 
were presented by the Engineers' Association : 

At a regular stated meeting of the Engineers' Asso- 
ciation of Rhode Island, held at their hall in Providence, 
R. I., on the evening of the 25th of March, 1882, the 



92 



MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 



death of our beloved brother, Zachariah Allen, was an- 
nounced, and the following preamble and resolutions 
were unanimously adopted. 

Whereas, God, in his infinite wisdom, Tias seen fit to 
remove from among us Zachariah Allen, a valued and 
honored member of this Association, therefore be it 

Resolved, That while bowing to the will of the Crea- 
tor, we deeply deplore the loss which has befallen us, 
and bear willing testimony to his worth as a gentleman, 
scholar, friend ; and we tender to his family our heartfelt 
sympathy in this their deep affliction. 

Resolved, That a copy of these resolutions be en- 
grossed and presented to the family of the deceased. 

Henry D. Cozens, "^ 
Bartlett Allen, > Comviittee. 
Wm. R. Smith, J 

JOHN O. NEILL, President. 

HENRY D. COZENS, Secretary. 



PROVIDENCE VETERAN FIREMEN'S ASSOCIATION. 

The quarterly meeting of the Providence Veteran 
Firemen's Association was held Tuesday evening in the 
rooms of the Franklin Society, Vice-President Geo. W. 
Cady in the chair. The attendance was very good, but 
beyond the transaction of a little routine business, 
scarcely anything was done, except with reference to 
the late First President, Hon. Zachariah Allen, who de- 
ceased March 17. Both in remarks by members and in 



OXFORD HUGUENOT SOCIETY. 93 

a paper prepared for the records, it was dwelt upon that, 
in spite of his great age, he was young in spirit and ac- 
tive in body, disclosing, in all his intercourse with mem- 
bers, hearty love for things of to-day as well as for old 
things, a remarkable amount of practical knowledge, 
and a very retentive memory. Beyond any member, he 
was the typical veteran. As he was by many years the 
oldest member, so he was, doubtless, the only man in 
Providence who, for some time previous to his decease, 
could say that he held an important place in the suc- 
tion-engine department of 1822. — C. E. C, Providence 
Journal, April 27, 1882. 



ACTION OF THE OXFORD HUGUENQT MEMORIAL 
SOCIETY, 

TAKEN AT ITS ANNUAL MEETING, HELD AT OXFORD, MASS., 
OCTOBER 4, 1882. 

Whereas, The Hon. Zachariah Allen, of Providence, 
R. I., the first President of the Huguenot Memorial 
Society of Oxford, died on the 17th of March, 1882, 
therefore. 

Resolved, That the members of this Society do here- 
by express their sincere sorrow at the death of their 
greatly respected President, who not only honored 
them and the Society by his spotless character, and 
many, varied, and eminent attainments, but endeared 
himself to them by his gentle spirit, and deep and 
unwavering interest in the concerns of this Society. 



94 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

Resolved, That the above be entered upon the records 

of the Society, and that a copy be sent to the family 

of Mr. Allen. 

G. W. SIGOURNEY, Clerk. 



MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 

At the monthly meeting of the Massachusetts Historical So- 
ciety, held April 13, 1882, in the absence of the President, the 
Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, the first Vice-President, the Rev. Dr. 
George E. Ellis, presided, and in the course of the evening 
spoke as follows : — 

Since our last meeting we have lost from the roll 
of our Corresponding Members a venerable and much 
respected man, the Hon, Zachariah Allen, LL.D., of 
Providence. He died in his eighty-seventh year, on the 
17th of last month, in the city of his birth and resi- 
dence. He was born September 15, 1795. He was 
President of the Rhode Island Historical Society ; and 
his long and most useful life, his family connections, 
the strong regard cherished for his upright and attrac- 
tive character, and his many distinguished public ser- 
vices, have made him for several years to be looked 
upon as the most prominent historical and representa- 
tive person in his State. On his mother's side he was 
a descendant of Gabriel Bernon, one of the most re- 
spected and distinguished of the Huguenots driven 
from France by the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, 
who came to Boston in 1688, and made a settlement in 
this State at Oxford. 



MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY. 



95 



Mr. Allen graduated in 1813 from Brown Univer- 
sity, of which institution he was for many years one of 
the trustees. He studied both law and medicine. His 
genius and versatility of talents, his mechanical skill, 
and his comprehensive scientific tastes and attainments 
were at first given to advance the manufacturing in- 
dustry and development of his prosperous State. Many 
ingenious, economical, and useful inventions and appli- 
ances came from his active brain, showing his scientific 
skill in the originating, increasing, and applying motive- 
power in steam and other machinery. His volumes 
on abstract and applied science are numerous and of 
great practical use. He ingeniously calculated the 
mechanical force of the fall at Niagara as equal to 
more than four and a half millions actual horse-power. 

The State, and especially the city of his birth and 
home, are indebted to him for many of its most prized 
institutions, improvements, and public works. He was 
a generous adviser and benefactor of all educational, 
charitable, and religious efforts for all classes of the 
community. More than all, he drew to himself the 
profoundest regard and respect, and the warmest at- 
tachment of all who knew him, and in proportion to 
their intimacy, — for the modest elevation, dignity, and 
purity of his character, for his simple habits and man- 
ner of life, for his delicate. Old School courtesy and 
urbanity. Some of us have been privileged to see and 
know him in his home, which he made so genial in its 
hospitalities. He had a peaceful and sudden release, 
in hardly impaired vi^or, after a blameless, useful, and 
Christian life. 



96 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

LETTER FROM EDWARD ATKINSON, ESQ. 

Boston, March 21, 1882. 
Wm. D. Ely, Esq. 

Dear Sir, — I greatly regretted that the absence of 
Mr. Whiting, and the pressure of office work, made it 
impossible for me to make arrangements to attend the 
funeral of our good friend, Mr. Zachariah Alien. 

Few men whom I have ever counted among my 
friends have so impressed me as Mr. Allen. He has 
left his mark in the services which he rendered ; and it 
will always be a pleasure to me to remember him, and 
to have counted him among my friends. 
Sincerely yours, 

EDWARD ATKINSON. 



LETTER FROM PROFESSOR WILLIAM B. ROGERS. 

117 Marlborough St., Boston, 
March 20, 1882. 

My dear Miss Allen, — We have just seen, in the 
morning paper, a notice of the death of your dear fa- 
ther, our kind friend of so many years ; and I cannot 
delay sending you an expression of our sympathy with 
you in this great bereavement. 

You know how highly we have prized your father's 
friendship, and how much we have enjoyed his bright 
intelligence and humane liberality, of thought, wherever 
it has been our happy fortune to meet him ; and you 



LETTER FROM PROF. W. B. ROGERS. 97 

can well imagine our sorrow to find that henceforth we 
shall see his kind face and hear his friendly voice no 
more. 

Some weeks ago my wife, in talking with Mr. R. 
of him, learned of his long walk in the cold evening 
air, like a young and vigorous man; and we know that 
you have often been made anxious by his readiness, 
forgetful of his years, to follow the youthful spirit of 
inquiry and of active well-doing that seemed to animate 
him to the last. 

But the circumstances of his death — sudden and 
without pain, in the midst of this useful work, after 
having escaped the usual infirmities of old age — may 
well be a source of consolation and comfort to all who 
loved him. 

This life of noble usefulness could not have had a 
more fitting close. Its memory, cherished lovingly by 
family and friends, will be a public benefaction, an 
example of rare intellectual gifts devoted to the highest 
practical ends. 

With our love and sympathy to yourself and Mrs. E., 
believe me, dear friend, 

Very faithfully yours, 

WILLIAM B. ROGERS. 



98 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. ] 

1 

LINES BY THE HON. CHARLES THURBER, \ 

OF BROOKLYN, N.Y. j 

HON. ZACHARIAH ALLEN, LL.D. : 

I 

Brown's old Trustee, long at the column's head, — j 

So long we were not thinking he would die ; \ 

But yet, last week, he joined the honored dead, 

Ere scarce the summons reached him from on high. i 

A man of culture, man of thought and brain, | 

Who deemed to live meant more than vegetate ; \ 

Not to be ca//ed great, but he toiled to gain j 

Those acquisitions that do ma/:e men great. ; 

A modest man, who, midst the great or small, j 

Ne'er walked akimbo, for a wider sway. j 

What God and culture made him, — that was all 
For which he wished or asked the right of way. 

He loved Rhode Island, loved her very name, j 

And kept her history under lock and key, I 

Up to the hour the dreadful summons came j 

To leave his dear head-centre of the free. ,1 

A genial man, I always loved to see ': 

When yearly summoned up to Manning Hall ; , i 

His smile of welcome had a charm for me, « 

A welcome now 't is pleasant to recall. ,| 

Farewell, old man, though we shall meet no more | 

On Brown's green campus, or within her hall, | 

Perhaps we may, upon the shining shore. 

Where Truth presents exhaustless feasts for all. 

Providence Jouriial^ March 27, 1882. 



I 



LETTER FROM REUBEN A. GUILD, LLD. 99 

LETTER FROM REUBEN A. GUILD, LLD., 
OF BROWN UNIVERSITY. 

Hon. Amos Perry, 

Dear SiR,-=-I have been informed that you are col- 
lecting material for a memorial of the late Hon. Zach- 
ariah Allen, LL. D. It may be fitting therefore for you 
to record the following pleasing reminiscence. On 
the very day of his death, March 17, he called at the 
College Library about noon, bringing with him some 
newspaper clippings relating to the history of the Col- 
lege. He spent more than an hour looking them over 
with me, and comparing them with my own " scrip-book." 
He seemed in unusually good health and spirits, and 
expressed himself as specially interested in the preser- 
vation of these transient memorials of the past. While 
we were thus engaged, Mr. Edward H. Hazard, a promi- 
nent lawyer in town, and one of our older graduates, 
called. An animated conversation ensued, Mr. Allen 
exhibiting all the intelligence and vivacity of youth. 
As he was leaving the Library, Mr. Hazard, pointing to 
him, significantly remarked, "The old man young." 
You can imagine the shock I received on reading in the 
paper the next morning the sad announcement of his 
sudden decease. The article on him which appeared 
in the columns of the Journal the following Monday, I 
have put into my " scrip-book," and appended thereto 
the foregoing statement. 

Yours very truly, 

REUBEN A. GUILD, Librarian, 
Brown University, 
Nov. S, 1SS2. 



L.ofC. 



lOO MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 



DR. BEEKMAN'S LETTER. 

5 East 34TH Street, New York, 
March 15, 1877. 
Hon. Zachariah Allen, 

Dear Sir, — Through the kindness of Mr, Henry 
T. Drowne I have received a copy of your patriotic 
defence of the Rhode Island system in Indian affairs, 
and of her noble behavior concerning civil and reli- 
gious liberty. 

Your truthful and clear exhibition of the narrow 
cruelty of the Pilgrims in Massachusetts furnishes 
another testimony of the unpalatable fact — to Boston 
historians — that Christianity, peace, and good-will were 
not practised in that vainglorious land. 

I thank you, as a descendant of tolerant Netherland 
families of New York, for your noble address ; for in 
honoring Rhode Island you praise the spirit of religious 
freedom, which began with the earliest Dutch settlers 
on Manhattan, and which has made this city in so many 
senses metropolitan. 

May I beg your acceptance of a copy of a report 
containing some views on hospitals, which have been 
called revolutionary ideas, but which seem worthy of 
investigation. 

Very truly and respectfully 

Your friend, 

JAMES W. BEEKMAN. 



LETTER FROM DR. SHEPARD. loi 

DR. SHEPARD'S LETTER. 

Providence, February 26, 1877. 
Zachariah Allen, Esq., 

My Dear Sir, — I hasten to thank you for your Ht- 
tle brocJnirc on the Rhode Island System of Civil and 
Religious Liberty, which I have just finished reading 
with great interest and a feeling of warm approval. 

The habit of expressing indiscriminate admiration 
for the Pilgrim Fathers and the Puritans of Salem has 
prevailed so long, that I am thankful that one gentleman 
has had the independence and knowledge to point out 
their weaknesses and vices. It is due to the truth, to 
Roger Williams, and to the State of Rhode Island that 
this should be done, and done effectually as you have 
done it. And I think the fact that it is due to tJic truth 
is of more consequence than might appear to a casual 
observer. It was always a puzzle to me, as a believer in 
the eventual triumph of right over WTong, — although 
the best of us must sometimes cry, " How long, O Lord, 
how long ! " when we see the temporary success of 
wrong, — that the Puritans who once possessed the com- 
plete control of the Church of England, should have 
lost this control, and lost it to the most sinful members 
of the Church at the time of Charles II., — or, worse still, 
to the most worldly and simoniacal under the Georges. 

But your little book shows that the Puritans had lit- 
tle of the spirit of real Christian toleration, or rather 
much less of it than the ribakl rakes who supplanted 
them in England ; for the latter, with all their licentious- 



I02 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

ness, had at least something of kindness and charity in 
their nature ; whereas our ancestors — I speak as a de- 
scendant of one of the chief Puritan ministers of New 
England — were " quaint old cruel coxcombs," as Byron 
calls Isaac Walton, and were stuffed up with spiritual 
pride. It is well that this should be known, and I thank 
you for making it known. 
With great regard, 

Truly yours, 

THOMAS P. SHEPARD. 



LETTER FROM EDWARD ATKINSON, ESQ. 

MUTUAL FIRE INSURANCE OF MILLS. 

Boston, Mass., Nov. 14, 1882. 
Amos Perry, Esq., 

My Dear Sir, — I very cheerfully comply with your 
request in regard to the history of Factory Mutual 
Insurance. 

As I understand the case, about the year 1834 Mr. 
Allen, being the owner of the Allendale Mills, and being 
dissatisfied both with the means of protection from loss 
by fire, and with the rate charged by the stock-insur- 
ance companies, carefully fitted his mill with an unusual 
amount of apparatus for extinguishing fire, consisting of 
pumps, pipes, and hydrants ; having already paid such 
attention to the right construction of the mill, according 
to the standard then known, — notably in laying shingles 
and floors in mortar over thick plank, — that within the 



LETTER FROM EDWARD ATKINSON. 103 

last two years, that single precaution has saved the mill 
from a very heavy loss in a fire which did but little 
injury. 

He then applied to the stock companies for a reduc- 
tion of the rate of premium, which was, I believe, 2]/. per 
cent. The reply was : " We know nothing about your 
apparatus, or means of protection ; a cotton-mill is a 
cotton-mill, and our rate is 2^ per cent," — or whatever 
the rate might have been. 

This led Mr. Allen to study the subject fully, and to 
lay the foundation for the mutual insurance of factories, 
which differs from any other system of insurance in this 
respect: that the principal function of the underwriter 
is to study the methods of prroentiiig ioss from fires 
which must occur in the nature of the business; and to 
establish conditions of admission based upon the 
adequacy of the apparatus, and the safe methods of 
constructing the mills. 

The Manufacturers' Mutual Fire Insurance Com- 
pany of Providence, which he established in 1835, ^^^s 
the first of these companies, followed in 1848 by the 
organization of the Rhode Island Mutual Fire Insurance 
Company; and in 1850 by the Boston Manufacturers' 
Mutual Fire Insurance Company, under the lead of the 
late James Read, upon consultation with Mr. Allen. 

Since then, other companies have been organized in 
Massachusetts and in Rhode Island, and lately one in 
Philadelphia; so that there are now nineteen P'actory 
Mutual Insurance Companies, following substantially 
the same plan, co-operating with each other, and saving, 
to the textile manufactories, paper-mills, machine-shops. 



I04 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

metal-works, cordage-factories, and other risks of like 
kind, not less than $2,ooo,cx)0 a year in the cost of their 
insurance. The aggregate amount of risks now car- 
ried by these nineteen companies is a little less than 
$300,000,000, and will be equal to that sum by the first 
day of January next. 

The average premium charged, which merely con- 
sists of a deposit subject to expenses and losses for the 
year, is now at the average rate of nine-tenths of one 
per cent; and the average return made upon that to 
the assured is more than two-thirds of the whole sum 
of the deposit. 

At the instance of these companies, new kinds of pre- 
ventive apparatus have been invented, new methods 
of construction have been adopted ; and the lesson which 
they have taught is now being rapidly extended through- 
out the, country, and is affecting the construction of 
works of various kinds, and inducing the adoption of 
methods of preventing loss ; by which it may be hoped 
that the enormous fire-tax now imposed upon the 
country, of over $100,000,000 a year, may be greatly 
reduced. 

It has rarely fallen to the lot of any single man to 
confer so great a benefit in so thoroughly simple and 
scientific a manner as has happened in this case ; and to 
Mr. Allen is due the greater share in this benefit. 

Yours very truly, 

EDWARD ATKINSON. 



LETTER OF BENJAMIN ABBOT. 105 

LETTER OF BENJAMIN ABBOT. 

Exeter, September 29, 1833. 

My Dear Sir, — I received a few days since three 
volumes, the Practical Tourist and the Science of Me- 
chanics, with the respects of their author. It chives me 
no small pleasure, after the lapse of so many years, to 
be affectionately remembered by a quondam pupil — 
and one, too, whose remembrance calls up many pleas- 
ant associations and recollections, which I love to 
indulge. I have not yet had time to examine the con- 
tents of these volumes, but from the subjects treated, and 
the manner proposed, I anticipate both pleasure and in- 
struction. Accept, my dear sir, my thanks for your 
kind remembrance, and the assurance that I am, as 
ever. 

Affectionately yours, 

BENJ. ABBOT. 
Zachariah Allen, Esq. 



Probably the most useful invention of the late Zach- 
ariah Allen, of Providence, R. I., who died Friday, was 
the automatic cut-off valve for steam-engines, which was 
patented in 1833, and is still employed, with some im- 
provements. In 1 82 1 he constructed the first furnace 
for the heating of dwelling-houses. A system of mutual 
insurance for mill property was his invention, and he' 
framed laws for the regulation of the sale of explosive 
oils. — Evening Post, New York. March 24. 1882. 



Io6 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 



447 North Broad St., Philadelphia, 
July 30th, 1880. 
Zachariah Allen, Esq., 

Dear Sir, — Please accept a copy of my Engineer's 
Handy-book. I am well aware that such a book is of 
no practical value to a man of your experience and 
mechanical genius; nevertheless I hope you will find 
something in it that will interest you. 

You will find your name on page 134. 

Hoping that this letter will find you in the enjoyment 
of good health, as it leaves me at present, I remain. 

Yours respectfully, 

STEPHEN ROPER. 

The passage referred to in the foregoing letter is as follows : — 

Zachariah Allen, of Providence, R. L, was un- 
doubtedly the inventor of, and the first practically to 
apply, the automatic cut-off, which is unquestionably one 
of the greatest improvements ever made in the steam- 
engine. — Roper's Engineer s Handy-book. E. Claxton 
& Co., Philadelphia, 1881. i2mo. pp. 678. 



LIST OF MR. ALLEN'S PUBLICATIONS. 



The Science of Mechanics, as applied to the Useful Arts in 
Europe and in the United States of America. — Adapted 
as a Manual for Mechanics and Manufacturers, with Rules 
and Calculations of general practical utility ; with numerous 
engravings. Providence. Published by Hutchins & Corey ; 
Miller & Hammond printers. 1829. 8vo. pp.364. 

European Travels. — Sketches of Improvements of the Useful 
Arts, of Society, Scenery, &c., in Great Britain, France and 
Holland. 2 vols. Providence, 1832. i2mo. pj). 363, 
428. 

Philosophy of the Mechanics of Nature, and of the Source 
AND Modes of Transmission of Natural Motive-power. — 
Illustrated by numerous engravings. D. Appleton & Co., 
New York, 1 85 1 . 8 vo. pp. 79 7. 

Historical Sketch of the Improvements in Transmission of 
Power from Motors to Machines. Boston, 1871. 8vo. 
pp. 52. 

Historical Sketch : The Rhode Island System of Treatment 
of the Indians, and of establishing Civil and Religious Lib- 
erty. Bi-centennial Address on the Burning of Providence, 
1676 — 1876. Providence, 1876. 8vo. pp. 34. 

Solar Light and Heat, the Source and Supply : Gravitation, 
with explanations of Planetary and Molecular Forces. Illus- 
trated with numerous engravings. D. Appleton & Co., New 
York, 1879. Svo. pp. 241. 



Io8 MEMOIR OF ZACHARIAH ALLEN. 

Numerous addresses and remarks, that were made on 
various occasions and subjects, and printed in pamphlet 
form. 

Numerous newspaper and magazine articles, some 
of which were exhaustive discussions of important local 
questions. 

He has left in manuscript an extended account of 
the Dorr War, with an explanation of his views on ques- 
tions involved in that contest; also, numerous unfinished 
sketches and essays. 



University Press : John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, 



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